


Transformers: Prime Divide

by Karmic Acumen (Karmic_Acumen)



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, BAMF Sam, Epic Friendship, Family, Fantasy, Friendship, Gen, Politics, Reincarnation, Science Fiction, Spiritual, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 04:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 125,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karmic_Acumen/pseuds/Karmic%20Acumen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam refused to think it was over after Bumblebee was captured by Sector Seven and they were all carted off like criminals in the middle of the night. He just didn't expect the next bout of interference to come from within Sector Seven itself. </p><p>Then again, there were a lot of things he never expected, but it figured it would be that way. After all, he'd lived his entire life without intuition, never even realizing there was a problem.</p><p>Key word being 'was.'</p><p>In hindsight, though, that brazen, amazing spy hermit was right: Primus HAD only ever given life to ONE planet. And that planet was most definitely not Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Distress Call

**Author's Note:**

> I got a plot bunny that didn't let me easily fall asleep one night, and since some of the themes here will help me figure out the rest of the plot for a certain original fiction I've been cooking up, I'm giving Transformers a try.
> 
> Some might think I am taking the idea of divine intervention (which the Dynasty of Primes were a blatant but rather flawed example of) and trying to make a feasible plot starter from it. And in a way, it's true, but only because I find it odd that the Primes would be the only "supernatural/godlike" beings in the Transformers universe. Especially since their most notable achievement seems to have been getting killed off one by one via fratricide by their brother that became so much stronger than them via, heh, deus ex machina.
> 
> That will come later though. The beginning will mostly give a plausible reason why Sam is such a wimpy loser in all the films, and why he will be everything BUT here. Later, I will explore what the AllSpark is and why it does what it does (as in, only create evil mutations). The narration will happen in first person, and the point of view will switch between Sam and Optimus Prime, with some other characters sometimes getting their turn.
> 
> Also, romance is not going to be the focus here, but there will be some pairings, most notably Sam/Mikaela and (eventually, many chapters down the line) Optimus/Elita-One.

****Arc I: Cognitive Readjustment** **

  


**Chapter 1: Distress Call**

"-. .-"

Earth was much noisier than Cybertron, owing to a much denser atmosphere. Virtually every motion made by a person or object caused a strong enough ripple through the air to be picked up by our audio receptors. It was not too long after our arrival on this planet that we had to adjust our audio sensitivity downwards, in order to avoid our performance being impaired by the sensory overload. Our processors _would_ have handled the strain of hearing the movement of every blade of grass within a five hundred meter radius, if we did not require the processing resources for other things, such as staying alive on a potentially hostile world and completing our mission without causing unnecessary loss of life.

I knew that, in time, our programming will adjust to the different planetary conditions and we will become more accustomed to processing more incoming data without sacrificing operational efficiency. For now, though, our constant use of energon detectors and motion-, electromagnetic- and bio-scanners was more important.

And yet, even with the adjustment to our audio sensors, we could hear better and farther than any human, so I could not claim that we were traveling in silence. But as I led my Autobots down this seemingly endless, empty man-made road in the middle of the night, following the directions burned by Megatron's navigation systems into a pair of flimsy glass lenses held together by a frail metal string, I could not help but feel that it was far too quiet. Despite the wind shearing, roaring against our frames, the silence between us was heavy and stifling, like a noose slowly grinding against my spark chamber.

None of my soldiers felt the urge to communicate, even amongst themselves. Not even through private comms, and I would have known if they were. Somehow, I always knew when my kin were having a private conversation, even if I was not privy to it.

It was made all worse by the fact that I knew this was not my Autobots staging a silent protest for my decision. They had vocally contested it, yes, Ironhide had even objected to my choice to not risk harm to the humans even at the cost of one of our own, but in the end they accepted my command in silence. Even when I voiced my intention to destroy the cube along with myself if it came down to it, they backed me.

All because, to them, I was Optimus Prime. Because even if I were to make the choice that would doom our entire race's future and set us on the inevitable path to extinction, it was _my_ choice to make, my _right_ , because my helm bore a Glyph that happened to match some old writings in an ancient archeological dig, and because of that, to them, I was a _Prime_.

The primitive asphalt felt rough against my tires, and my internal sensors and adjustment subroutines were working constantly to compensate for every inch-tall bump, but when that was the only load on my processors, I had little to distract me from my musings. I half-expected Ironhide to chime in and grumble something about brooding not being a Primely thing to do, but no such thing occurred. I took that to mean that he was valiantly holding himself in check, because he did not trust himself not to say something disrespectful to me for leaving behind Bumblebee.

Oh, Ironhide tried to hide his worry for Bumblebee by protesting a different matter. Why should we save the humans if they were such a primitive and violent race? But really, were we so different, once upon a time? I called Ironhide out on it over a private comm, pointed out that it had been _him_ leading the Thetacon tribes that waged war on us, all those vorns before human civilization even emerged, just because they believed Sentinel Prime was a crazed fraud for saying the AllSpark existed and could be found (and it had).

Before we touched down on this planet, I studied the transmissions of the people here, and I was stunned by how similar they were to us, but so young. All of them _children_ , but twice as tenacious as our own hatchlings. After failing the young of my own race when Megatron bombed all youth sectors, I could not even fathom bringing harm to these organics, these beings whose lives burned for so short a time, but which could burn so _bright_ despite their frailty.

I did not have to explain that to Ironhide. My reminder of his past actions were enough. But despite him backing down, I am left wondering if perhaps I am just rationalizing my decision to sacrifice anything for the beliefs that have carried me through this endless war.

I suppose it was the perfect setup to a cosmic joke, to make me have to choose between them and my _own_ last youngling.

Innocent, bright, _precious_ Bumblebee.

I could not understand how my spark did not flare in self-disgust at the blatant hypocrisy of my own thoughts. _Precious_. I chose a wonderful method to show he was _precious_.

Bumblebee, who Ironhide had mentored at my request after that fiasco, hundreds of vorns ago, when Megatron told the yellow bot and his squad to arrest me, only to have Starscream try to ambush and offline us all. Bumblebee who, even before that, had _not_ been just a random hatchling from the second generation of new protoforms brought into being by the AllSpark. Even if everyone believed it, Bumblebee included, I knew better. I always carried the evidence with me, in the form of a Creator bond I kept totally blocked at all times.

The truth was that Bumblebee was the very _first_ new spark created by the Cube after I, Megatron and my mentor Sentinel Prime unearthed the Temple of Al Simfur and, with it, the AllSpark. Just an orn before it was powered by the device Wheeljack invented, which teleported a sun into orbit, I was alone in the Simfur temple main chamber, studying the Cyberglyphics. The Cube, which we thought was totally depleted, flared once and struck me with a mighty surge of AllSpark energy. I was thrown across the hall and knocked into stasis by the blast, and when I recovered Ratchet pronounced me to be in perfect condition. Even better than I was before the event in fact. My Spark had been reenergized and all my systems were at optimum efficiency.

We all thought that was the only effect, and in the excitement of having real, tangible _proof_ that the Cube really was the AllSpark we had been searching for, the artefact that finally ended the war with Ironhide's disbelieving Thetacons, we set the issue behind us. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth, as humans would say.

I do not know even now how it was that Bumblebee only activated during the second hatching, or how his spark survived that long, unless it found a protoform somewhere, somehow, and stayed in stasis for an age ( _without_ a constant energon supply), until it inexplicably got mixed up with the second generation birthed by the AllSpark during the latter half of my joint rule with Megatron.

I also know not how it was that we never ended up within a close enough proximity of each other for the bond to activate, as Bumblebee matured. Seeing as how I tended to visit all major cities on a regular basis, even as I kept up my archeological digs, it should have happened, especially since I always visited the youth sectors.

In the end, the first time I actually met Bumblebee was when he and Cliffjumper, a friend of his with a similar frame but colored red, applied for work as guards for the Al Simfur temple. Then again, it was not truly a meeting. More like he was submitting his application chit while I was looking upon the chamber from behind a two-way mirror on an overlooking platform. Our connection flared, like it should have done had I actually built his frame and brought it before the Cube to be given life. It brimmed with my surprise and his shock, his confusion, then came fear and panic, panic, _panic-_

I shuttered the bond closed immediately, before it could cause the youngling to succumb to the processor crash I could see building up. I internally flinched at his reaction – his reaction to being touched by my spark – but if _I_ could not manage to make sense of how the bond made _me_ feel, how could I expect him to take it well without even knowing what it was? It had startled me, taken me by surprise as much as it had him. I had not even been aware it existed before that point, unlike him.

I brushed my mind against the bond only twice after that, both times in the privacy of my quarters, and I realized he had, in fact, recognized what it was. But when I felt his longing for his Creator being pushed aside by defiant independence – he had _always_ felt the void of the bond, felt _abandoned_ by his creators among the other AllSpark creations, and wanted to make it on his own just to prove he _could_ – I did not find the will to immediately reveal myself, explain myself. So I put the block in place, shunted it to a corner of my mind, though it pained me to do so, until I could build a rapport with him, hopefully enough that he would listen to what I had to say when I confronted him on this matter.

Only later did I realize that I was only failing him a second time through that delay.

Only later did I realize that the mere fact he had _stayed_ at the temple instead of withdrawing his application, despite knowing his creator was there, meant that, deep down, he still wanted to meet them.

I had his application accepted, and that of his friend – I could not deprive him of the familiarity of Cliffjumper after such an experience, despite the bot's rather wild nature – and as I gradually established a tentative working relationship, possible only thanks to my anonymity as his Creator, I encouraged him when he expressed his admiration of the Temple Priests. Encouraged him to become an Acolyte, a priest in training, taught to link with and handle the Cube.

Then, Megatron severed the brother bond we shared (I had to force my processors away from the drive space where _those_ memories were stored). He began to covet and secure more power, and my reluctance to stand up to him only fueled his ego. Then we were attacked by Nebula forces, just as my Science Division was unearthing the artefacts responsible for the strange surges of energy the Cube was giving off, and Megatron used that as a rallying point to create a new faction and bring war upon Cybertron once again.

Sometimes I still wonder if it was a mistake to break into Megatron's quarters looking for the artefact he had taken out of the hands of the science division despite it being beyond his purview. But I know that even in absence of that pretext, he would have engineered a reason to have me arrested. That he sent Bumblebee and Cliffjumper to do it felt like a cosmic farce. That it was all a ploy to have Starscream ambush and offline us was what ultimately made me decide to see the situation for what it was, Civil War, and assume my role as Optimus Prime even if I still did not believe the glyph on my helm meant anything.

Instead of a descendant of the Dynasty of Primes, I could have merely been part of a line of archive clerks for all we knew. But everyone else believed it, and if it allowed me to safeguard those who would not succumb to Megatron's madness, if it enabled me to rally my brethren away from his poison, then so be it.

To this day I am surprised I did not terminate Starscream for Bumblebee's role in that disaster. I spared him, even as I blew up the city of Metrotitan while Megatron was creating his new faction.

After that, all thoughts of acknowledging the bond between Bumblebee and I disappeared from my processor. He may not have been happy, but he was content and he had his _life_ , something I could not guarantee if his connection to me was revealed and made him a target. A dangerous thing for a scout that often traveled alone. And in those moments, which came more frequently than I wanted to admit, when my resolve faltered, I remembered the defiance I felt when I brushed the bond all those vorns ago, and told myself it had been his choice as much as mine, even if we had made it separately.

After a while my motivations changed. My despair threatened to overcome me as my planet became more dead than alive. I made some foolish choices, fell for Megatron's deceptions, fake offers of peace, time and again, until the numbers of Autobots offlined when coming to rescue me from my foolishness – offlined brothers and creators or caretakers of my _clansmen_ – were too much to bear. Subroutines and firewalls had to be developed to prevent a bond-brother's death from also killing the other. But even so kin bonds were lost, mine included. The femmes, the ones that most often maintained the clans and had the most bonds, were hunted down.

It left me bitter, and for a while all I could concern myself with was ending Megatron and everything he stood for. For betraying our race as much as for betraying _me_. I stopped to take a look at myself – saw I was becoming like _him_ – only when I alienated Elita-One, but there was no time to repair things between us by the time I had the AllSpark launched into space. After that, we all broke off, splintered, each going off to look for the Cube among different stars, hopefully preventing our war from endangering other worlds.

And now, here we were, involving human children. Just another item to add to my long list of failures.

And Bumblebee…

Yes, it had been his choice to jump out of hiding and save those children, exposing himself, but he had had to do it because _I_ had dropped them. The list always seems to grow longer and longer.

Perhaps I have fallen into the other extreme. I see it unacceptable that our actions would inflict our war upon this innocent planet, to the extent that I am willing to let my own kin be captured and taken instead of risking his captors harm.

At least our routes seem to coincide, so we are ultimately following them, albeit on a parallel, not too distant road. My assumption that the humans would take Bumblebee to the same location as the AllSpark has proven true, if nothing else. It is poor consolation, but at this point I will take what I can get.

I have long been fighting a hopeless war.

My sensors picked up a familiar sort of radiation passing through my frame. Ratchet. He was driving a few meters behind me, and I wondered just what he was picking up if he felt the need to run a medical scan on me while still in motion. I pinged him and waited for him to open a private comm line. I could have done it myself, but medics need to figure out scan results in their own time. When he did, I asked. :Have you found anything my own inner sensors missed?: We were decavorns past the point where I minded him doing it without my assent.

The medic's even voice held no more inflexion than usual, but it did not matter once the reply came. _:Just checking for spark damage.:_

I almost swerved off the road in shock.

He was looking for the kind of spark damage that occurred when a bond-brother or descendant got offlined.

I had to redirect part of the memory assigned to monitoring interstellar transmissions towards my main processor in order to prevent any other obvious reactions.

He _knew_. _:How…?:_

_:You forget that I've never allowed anyone to miss their periodic checkups, Prime:_ Ratchet replied. _:And that includes you and Bumblebee. Deep-spark scans are an essential part of those.:_

_:… There are no scans that can identify who the bond nodes link to:_

_:No offense, prime, but even if it wasn't already obvious from how you and Bumblebee are the only ones left of us that still have kin bonds of any kind, besides the twins and Ironhide and Chromia, your reaction to my earlier answer gave you away.:_

I raised my firewalls fully and ran a deep-level program that forcefully synched my resources until there was no outward evidence of how truly rattled I was. _:You will inform no one, Ratchet. Do you understand?: _I did not intend to explain why I was so set on this matter and I had no desire to dwell on it either.

_:Understood,:_ Ratched crisply acquiesced. _:Not like I'll have to do anything differently from what I've been doing for the past 200 vorns.:_

I was glad I had reassigned those resources earlier. It was all that made sure I did not swerve like I was glitched on high grade again.

He had known for that long… roughly 1600 human years. Had he told Bumblebee of his suspicions in regards to it? The suspicions I had just confirmed?

Likely not, because if our status had been revealed he would have most likely complained on and off about what a waste of a perfectly good bond it was to refuse to acknowledge our roles in each other's lives. He might have recruited the others to his cause as well, I pondered with bitter humor.

I was about to say something else to him when a high-priority uplink flashed in my virtual heads-up display. Security codes were instantly recognized and another secure comm came online.

Despite all the resource adjustment I had carried out over the past breem, my engine still revved in astonishment when Bumblebee's voice spoke in my audials. _:Bumblebee to Prime. Please respond ASAP.:_

_:Youngling!:_ I could not help myself blurting that, and I thanked Primus that I did not slip and say anything actually incriminating. Once I managed to get a grip on my frayed circuits, I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and opened up the link to the others. :Bumblebee! Status report!:

_:Whoa whoa, wait, what?:_ Jazz stopped next to me, surprised and hopeful in equal parts. _:Lil'buddy, ya' really there?:_

_:All systems online.:_ Why, oh, _why_ did he sound so off-balance then? _:Nothing essential has been permanently affected by the harpoons or liquid nitrogen.:_

_:I'll be the judge of that!:_ Ratchet snapped over the comm. _:Then we'll have a talk about dismissing potential frame and system problems after being forcefully pushed into stasis.:_

_:And I'll have to run you through basic drills for a decacycle after he's done with you!:_ Ironhide cut in. _:Primus, youngling! How could you let yourself be captured by those squishies after all the training I gave you?:_

For the love of Primus, did he never change? I knew that the amount of time Ironhide spent training others was proportional to the level of concern he had for their wellbeing, but did he have to choose the drill sergeant routine over tact _each and every time_? I _knew_ he was not emotionally inept. He _knew_ better than to keep up the attitude just for its own sake.

I was about to open a private link and express my disappointment, but Bumblebee beat me to it.

_:Because, clearly, that training covered every possible scenario there could ever be, including methods for miraculously becoming invulnerable when weapons specifically designed to take us down start being fired on my position from all directions!:_ Bumblebee's reply was positively scathing. So much that I was left speechless. Knowing how much Bumblebee looked up to Ironhide, and how fond the latter was of the former, I could only listen in growing stupefaction. _:Including achieving that Primus-worthy feat while trying to cradle, in your servos, precious cargo that could easily shatter! Oh, and of course, that training includes getting out of any bind someone could possibly land in after trying to ensure Pr… no one would have to live with the guilt of dropping Sam and the female to their deaths after all they did was help us!:_ I felt at once humbled and wretched. He was concerned for my feelings, even after I let him be taken… Did he not hold that against me at all? _:Yes, the perfect solution to all that could surely have been found in all that firefight training you've given me. That I was expressly forbidden to retaliate using said firepower was no issue at all!:_

Even though it should not have been possible over comm links, I could feel the shock as it ripped through the three Autobots around me. Cybertron did not lack sarcasm, but it also did not have it developed to the level of an art form like it was on Earth. Clearly, Bumblebee had internalized the concept to an extent none of us could hope to match at this point in time. Except for Jazz perhaps, but my lieutenant seemed content to slacken his chassis suspensions in what could only be admiration.

_:… Bumblebee…"_ Ratchet tried, surprisingly wary _. :Are you really alright? You never lose your temper... Did those humans do anything-:_

_:It has nothing to do with the humans!:_ The yellow bot snapped again. But neither of us believed everything was really fine. Not even needing to signal the others, I left the road and took to the empty fields, right in the direction I knew Bumblebee had been heading. They followed me across the rough terrain, not daunted by the speed I was gaining. _:At least not… I'm not…:_ Seeing his bluster so easily popped only made me worry more. _:I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at anyone. I'll submit to any disciplinary measures after the mission is over.:_

_:No.:_ That was Ironhide. _:I was out of line.:_

I wondered if the other two were as surprised as I was by that admission.

_:I may outrank you, but for this mission you report directly to Prime, so only he has the authority to criticize your performance unless he delegates the task to another, and if that ever happens it will be to Prowl, not me. And you're also right about your assessment of the situation, and if the time comes when either of them evaluates you, I'll tell them the same thing.:_

_"…I'm sorry, Ironhide.:_

_:Yeah… I am too.:_ And when _Ironhide_ did not go all gun-happy or start cussing when things became uncomfortable, it was _serious_. _:Just… where are you Bumblebee? You never said… do you need backup? How did you escape?:_

_:I didn't escape.:_

I decided it was high time I finally rejoined the conversation. _:They still have you? Or did they set you free?:_ Could I have been wrong about the humans after all?

_:The Sector Seven troops have been neutralized. All of them:_

I almost did not drive around a boulder properly.

_:Did you slag them?:_ Ironhide asked hopefully.

_:Ironhide!:_ I chided, but I, too, was curious. _:Bumblebee, Report. Properly this time.:_ Honestly, that should have been the first thing we had him do. This conversation had truly gotten out of control before it even started.

_:I came back online four and a half breems ago to find that the four manned aircraft that took me down were gone, and that all the cars making up the Sector Seven convoy had come to a halt in a disorderly fashion all over the highway. Given lingering gas particles in the air, I suspect an airborne compound was responsible. All humans are accounted for and unconscious, save for the one who facilitated my release by shutting down the automated software which ensured liquid nitrogen was sprayed on me in a constant flux. Sir… the human. It's… this makes no sense, sir. It's Sam, but...:_

_:Sam?:_ I was as incapable of processing that as the next bot.

_:Ye're sayin' the kid took out everybody there?:_ Jazz dared ask what we all wanted to know.

_:I don't know!:_ Bumblebee said miserably. _:All I know is that when I got my bearings and came out of the battle mode I'd reflexively entered after I came loose of the trailer, I scanned Sam like I always do! And I've been having trouble staving off a processor glitch ever since. I need backup, fast! I need Ratchet here!:_

_:We are coming.:_ I told him. If he thought he had a processor glitch despite systems showing green, it meant something that defies logic had happened. Something even he had trouble processing. _:We headed for you as soon as you contacted us. We will be there in a few kliks. What is wrong Bumblebee?:_

_:It's Sam! This… my scanners must have been fritzed by the freezing. The readings show his insides all wrong! And he's behaving oddly-:_

_:Oddly how?:_ Ratched asked.

_:He's just… I don't know! He just is!:_

_:Alright, hold on!:_ We finally got to the main road. _:We have almost reached your location.:_ It was a long time ago that I had last heard Bumblebee so distressed while giving a report, mostly due to him always avoiding any sort of emotional ties to his mission objectives. Somehow, Samuel Witwicky had achieved what nothing had done before in the past several thousand human years: turned Bumblebee's happy-go-lucky attitude into something sparkfelt instead of just a coping mechanism.

As I accelerated down the highway we had abandoned in favor of stealth, I could only wish that this miracle had not come hand-in-hand with this emotional upheaval. Alas, this seems to be one result that attachments always bring.


	2. Divine Intervention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sector Seven convoy is hijacked via misinformation and sleeping gas and Sam learns something about himself.

I used to resent not being allowed out past 9 PM. When I finally reached my second year in High School and turned 17 (I'm one of those kids with their birthday a week after the start of the school year), my parents finally gave me some more leeway. Dad even said he'd buy me a car if I raised part of the cash and got good grades, and I managed to pull it off, even for my genealogy report (barely). The rest should have been pretty straightforward, right? Get the mark, go to a car lot, buy a used car and get it to look good as new with a fresh paint job. Then proceed to cruise around through Tranquility – my home town – and finally get noticed by everyone who wouldn't give me the time of day before, until the universe finally realized it owed me some slack and let me bag the girl of my dreams.

Given all the time I've had to myself since I was a kid, due to my complete and utter failure to stand out –even Mikaela Banes, said girl of my dreams, didn't even realize we'd been in the same class since fifth grade- I've had enough time to envision things and plan them out in my head. Up to the drive-in late night movie and going to the Lookout afterwards, even cuddling on the car bonnet while staring at the stars. It would have ended with me driving her home near midnight, sharing our first kiss on her doorstep and setting a date for the follow-up (which would hopefully conclude with us making out on the backseat before we repeated the final two steps of the previous date).

None of those plans bore fruit. The only thing I did manage to do was bag the girl (I think?), but even that happened because my ever so carefully laid plans were driven completely off the rails by a close encounter of the third kind. Or, really, several of them.

So now it's past 1 at night and I, Samuel James Witwicky, am in a government-issued black van, being carted off to God knows where by some clandestine secret agency. All because I bought a car that turned out to be a giant alien robot.

Who knew?

I didn't blame Bumblebee for this, even though I did think he was Satan's Camaro for a while. How could I blame him? The guy saved my life, and Mikaela's too, when we slipped off Optimus while he was hanging off the bridge, hiding us from Sector Seven helicopters. I was still astonished at that happening actually. Optimus Prime was essentially the leader of an alien race, and he played Spiderman, _hid_ just so he could protect us, even though he could have easily left us to fend for ourselves after getting my grandfather's glasses.

But Bumblebee… 'Bee jumped out of hiding just to catch the two of us, only to get himself captured for his trouble. _Impaled_ by helicopters and _frozen_. God, the horrible, keening sounds he made. Do these robots –Autobots – even feel pain? It sure sounded like it.

I had to close my eyes and force back the urge to be sick, but that only made it easier to see the memory of it in my head again. And with it came an irrational surge of _rage_. Optimus Prime and the others could have saved him. Easily. That big black guy, Ironhide, could have probably brought down the helicopters by himself. They could have freed Bumblebee, _should_ have saved him, but instead they hid and let Bumblebee get carted off, just because Optimus Prime didn't want us humans hurt in any way by their alien war. I'm all for _that_ , I'm just angry that the humans spared here are assholes that don't seem inclined to repay that goodwill in any way. I've never been ashamed of my race before, but now…

"Hey hey! Kid! Are you listening?"

My eyes snapped opened and I glared at that creep. Seymour Simmons, the apparent leader of this clandestine agency. Or at least the head of the group sent to apprehend us. Me and my parents, and because she was there Mikaela got taken too. I wonder if she'll ever forgive me for that. Sure, it _was_ her choice to get in that Camaro with me after Barricade attacked us, but it was still _me_ that persuaded her to do it.

Seymour Simmons. _This_ was the kind of life Optimus Prime felt they should spare? Spare at the cost of one of their own?

Simmons must have thought that smiling would unnerve me, and he was right, but only because it looked like a leer. "Worried about your girlfriend?" He taunted, and I wanted to do nothing but somehow throw him to the ground and stomp on his face. Or toss him out of the moving car. "Don't worry. She's right where she's supposed to be."

He sounded so proud of himself, even though it hadn't even been his idea. After they froze Bumblebee and handcuffed the two of us, one of the other agents (scientists?) that came with the second wave of Sector Seven operatives (and who happened to be driving the very car I was in) suggested me and Mikaela should be separated, so they put us in different vans. Mom and Dad (and Mojo) stayed together, but even they got a third van instead of sharing one with either of us.

I hoped she was okay. That they were all okay, since I _knew_ Bumblebee wasn't, and _one_ person getting essentially tortured ( _abducted for experimentation_ ) because of me was already one person too many.

And it _was_ because of me. How stupid could I be anyway? Me and Mikaela had the nerve to handcuff all the agents to the bridge supports, even force Simmons to undress as vengeance, but didn't even think to search their pockets and relieve them of their cellphones? Really?

I hated this. I hated it so badly. My total inability to think on my feet. The only thing I ever manage to do under adrenaline is run, or babble like an idiot when that's not an option. Anything else, and my brain locks up. After the fact, I manage to come up with dozens of ways things could have turned out in my favor, but that only serves to highlight that I'm only ever an incompetent when it really matters. I failed to make the football team because of it (as Trent always likes to taunt me about) and when Barricade attacked us, I couldn't do jack when that – let's face it – _tiny_ 'con jumped at me. Mikaela was amazing by comparison, quickly finding that saw and cutting its head off.

All I _did_ manage was to get Mikaela to sit in my lap for a while, during the ride Bumblebee gave us, and even then she was only humoring me. And I owe having her along to Bumblebee for chasing me across town and drawing her attention when I was thrown head over heels after crashing my mom's bike in front of her and her friends.

I wanted to resent grandpa Archibald for finding Megatron and getting me indirectly involved in this mess, but I couldn't anymore. At least not for that specifically, not after he went blind and insane because of everything. Now I was wondering about something else, like if the brain damage he suffered could have somehow transmitted, jumped a generation even, and latched onto me. When I rambled to Trent about a link between brain damage and football, it was just another case of me going stupid at the worst of times, but that's just it: it always happens, and never seems to get better. All that "experience" that people supposedly acquire after successes and failures, I never seem to get any of it, despite everything I go through. I never seem to get any _better_.

I jerked in my seat as something smacked me on the forehead. My attention snapped back to the present and I realized Simmons had just hit me with his "do anything and get away with it badge." All of a sudden, I had to smother the irrational urge to laugh hysterically. It was the next-to-last drop in a pool of absurdity threatening to spill. "I asked you something, kid!" Simmons hissed.

I wished my hands weren't cuffed behind my back, just so I could poke him in the eyes. Deciding to ignore him until the interrogation became physically painful (though I hoped it wouldn't, but who knew with these guys?) I looked past him, and my sight landed on the rear-view mirror.

The driver was looking at me. The guy who'd suggested me and Mikaela be separated was looking right at me through that mirror. He was the only other person in the van with us, and I wondered how he still qualified for field work. He looked _ancient_. Well, not ancient, but still in his mid-forties, with dark greying hair and faint age lines on his forehead, and the corners of his black eyes. He was clean-shaven, and he had fewer wrinkles than my grandpa did at that age, but then again everyone did.

I narrowed my eyes, trying to transmit my displeasure with him without breaking silence, but I don't know if it worked.

Much to my surprise, the attempted interrogation didn't last much longer. Maybe because even Simmons didn't have much steam left after Bumblebee lubricated all over him. If we ever got out of this, I'd have to talk to him about not doing that, since the human equivalent is demeaning and gross enough that I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

Even more surprising, though, was that I actually dozed off at some point. Maybe it was because there was no one within my actual _sight_ to worry over, or because everything (from being tossed around by Decepticons to meeting benevolent aliens) finally caught up with me, but I actually fell asleep.

I must not have slept for long, though, because by the time I was violently snapped out of it by the van sharply swerving as though trying and failing to avoid an accident, I hadn't managed to have any nightmares.

I almost fell off the seat I was in when I finally woke up fully, but didn't have time to do more than yelp before getting knocked around again. "What's happening?!" Simmons shouted, wildly looking around before realizing that only the driver could possibly answer him. "Is it the NBEs again?"

"Unconfirmed sir!" The driver answered, surprisingly calm for the situation, though his voice did seem strained. "None of the other teams are responding- hold on!"

To _what?!_

The van swerved, avoiding one of the other vans that had inexplicably come to a halt in the middle of the road. Again. Not bad driving for an old man. Still, this time I did slip off the seat when the car stabilized. I groaned when I hit the car mat but no one paid attention to me.

Simmons had somehow managed to crawl to the passenger seat up front (how weird that these vans didn't have the front section cut off from the rest). "This is Seymour Simmons!" He shouted in the radio. "All teams report in!" Static, then garbled exclamations on top of each other. "One at a time!"

The voices were either tight or weak, as if people were giving their last breath. "Just… knocked out-" "-gas-" "-coming through the ventilation systems-!"

"What?" Simmons yelled. I couldn't see what look he had on from where I'd fallen on the car floor, but he sounded frightened. "Long-range comms are offline? What about those in the air!? The helicopters-"

"You sent them back to base earlier because they were either suffering a sensor malfunction or needed a refuel," the driver answered.

"Damn! I knew that!" Simmons tried to hedge. "I meant replacements!"

"You never demanded any, sir."

"I know!" Simmons was panicked, no doubt thinking Optimus and the others had come back. I honestly hoped they had, even if it _was_ just to free Bumblebee.

Then I heard it, in the lull of the night after the car finally came to a stop. The air hissing through the front vents, and the vents lining the top of the rear section. Even though my adrenaline had long since spiked, this was one occasion where I actually managed to understand what was going on. Somehow, some sort of sleeping gas was seeping into the car, the same one that had knocked out the people in the others. So far it sounded like accidents had been averted, but why and how was it happening?

I tried to force myself up, but the way I'd fallen only let me twist to the side, lying on my right shoulder. By the rushed scrambling in the front of the van, I could only assume they were trying to shut it down or- "Where are those gas masks?" Simmons wheezed. "They should be here!"

"I'll check the back!" the driver quickly slipped through the space between the seats, _over_ me and opened a container built into the panel beneath one of the side windows on the left. I couldn't see what he was doing, even after I twisted around to watch, but I got my answer when a whole bunch of gas masks fell right in front of me.

And the old-looking driver collapsed all over the wide seat I was no longer on, as though the gas was pulling him under. "Here!" He wheezed, putting on a mask and tossing another at the front. Simmons managed to catch it, barely, and pulled it over his face.

It seemed to work, but only for a moment. Simmons, despite having folded in the front seat and affixing the mask to his face as well as he could, collapsed completely. I couldn't see him, since I'd turned around in all the confusion, but I heard him mumble something. Also, in front of and above me the driver seemed to lose consciousness.

And just when I began to feel a heavy scent reaching my own nostrils, the driver pulled his mask off. His eyes were fully alert. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of different face masks, like the ones doctors and nurses always seem to have on. One of them he used to cover his own mouth and nose, and the other he reached down and pressed against _mine_.

A pungent smell assaulted me, and it chased away the drowsiness that I hadn't even felt creeping over my senses. I stared at him in bewilderment as he pulled the string over my head, fixing the thing in place. My shock was only tempered by how I finally stopped holding my breath (I hadn't, until that point, realized I had stopped breathing).

We stayed that way, just staring. Well, _I_ was staring, he was eyeing the front, to make sure, I think, that Simmons had been knocked out. When the creep was well and truly out of it, the man gracefully pushed himself up, stepped over me again and, even as the mask was still on his face, spoke. "Terminate Protocol Bad Breath."

I couldn't help it. I laughed. Not a lot, just a startled squeak or two, but still, this was too much absurdity in a day.

Once I'd calmed down, I noticed the old man didn't have his mask on anymore. Checking Simmons' pulse and presumably finding it within acceptable parameters, he climbed back to the rear of the van and helped me back to the sideseat, taking my mask off as he did. I would have struggled if I didn't already know it was a lost cause.

Not troubled by my wariness, the driver calmly returned to the front and picked up the radio. "This is agent 'Old Dog,' all teams come in." No answer. "Excellent." I could only stare stupidly as the middle-aged man once again came to the back, his black suit completely unruffled despite everything that had happened during the past five minutes. He casually took a seat across from where I'd fallen back in mine. Then he just stared at me.

I would have been concerned about dishonorable intentions that old men would have towards kids if I'd have still considered myself a kid or if I hadn't just seen him deliberately keep me awake. As it was, I did only what I could: looked back at him, my face guarded. I'd only know what I was in for when he spoke.

"This makes no sense."

Or not.

I jumped, and realized I couldn't do anything other than the obvious. "What doesn't?" I asked.

The man waved his hand, trying to transmit a meaning I wasn't getting. "This. Everything!"

"Uh…" I briefly glanced around but nope, nothing had changed other than what he'd done himself. "I thought it was _you_ who'd basically sabotaged everyone? For whatever reason…"

The Old Dog snorted. "Not that, kid. Obviously, that was me. I mean _you_ don't make sense. You basically didn't do much of anything. Most of it was your girlfriend or those robots. You just barely rode this entire mess by the seat of your pants. Sheer dumb luck and nothing else." Well, that was rude, but apparently he wasn't finished. "I keep trying to figure out _the reason_ but… there's no explanation for why you'd be such a… such a…"

Maybe it was everything that had happened. Maybe I was too tired, or maybe I was past caring. I heaved a resigned breath and gave him the word he was looking for. "Wimp?"

The man blinked. "I was going to say _dork_ but that works too."

A flash of annoyance. "Yes, well I've done my best to keep my opinions to myself so I'll thank you for doing the same!"

The man blinked again, as though he couldn't understand why I'd take that poorly. "Well pardon me for trying to deliver a compliment."

"A compliment," I deadpanned.

"Yes, kid, a compliment. Obviously, if I can't understand _why_ you'd qualify as a dork after such a short amount of time we spent in each other's presence, then _clearly_ what I mean is that you have the markings of one who should be everything _but_."

He had officially lost me, although I appreciated the thought? "O…kay?" A flat look. Was he waiting for me to say something? A follow up to the conversation? My glance towards the front showed that Simmons was still there and living, although unconscious, and since I didn't know how long the gas would work, I figured I probably shouldn't stall things too much. "Markings?"

The old dog snorted and leaned forward, but did nothing further. He just looked closely, his eyes roaming up and down my person as though evaluating something for defects. I wouldn't go so far as to say I felt like a piece of meat, but the behavior did seem much like that of art critics while studying a sculpture or painting. "I mean your heart, boy. It's shining like a strobe light."

Right. He was crazy. Or he was speaking in code.

He gave me a long look. "You really have no idea what I'm talking about do you? No clue at all." His eyes sharpened – I could see it because he was so near – and his posture straightened. "Is there anything unusual about me that you can see?"

Other than how he acted as though we were in a café instead of a hijacked government van whose real owner had just been put under? "No?" What _was_ I supposed to say? Honestly!

"Hmm." He pinned me with that unwavering gaze of his, and I felt like something was crawling all over me, like ants. Or like a stream of warm water flowing _through_ me. It was distracting and alarmingly pleasant, enough so that I didn't stiffen when he slowly raised his right arm, extending his hand forward towards my sternum. I didn't know what he was reaching out for, and I hoped it wasn't anything vital inside my rib cage, but when he spun his wrist as though undoing a latch, I felt something _vibrate_ in my chest, and then came _light_.

When I looked down, I was so startled that I cried out, pushed back in my seat, widening my eyes in fear, but no discomfort or pain came. Eventually, I had to blink, and when I did I and the apparition didn't vanish I had no strength to look at anything other than the white vortex of light right above my torso. It was… beautiful. Wonderful. A white flower with four petals, wide enough to cover my chest entirely.

I didn't even think about the man across from me anymore, but I heard him when he spoke. "No." My eyes finally tore from the wondrous sight and met his. And there was nothing reassuring in the sheer _confusion_ in them. "That can't be right."

"What did you do?" I asked, surprised by how awestruck my tone had become.

"Brought your spiritual axis to the visible spectrum."

"Or that was the plan anyway," the man honestly seemed troubled as he rubbed his chin.

It worried me, for reasons I couldn't fathom. "What are you talking about?" I demanded. "I swear if you start spouting about meditating with my friend's New Age hippie mom, I'm taking my folks and girlfriend and leaving." The flower flared orange for an instant, but it cleared as soon as my irritation passed. "Who are you anyway?"

"By the Buddha, kids these days. Do them a favor and they'll gouge out your eyes," the middle-aged man shook his head and smiled ruefully when he pulled back. "Who am I? Just an old hermit whose days are numbered." I could only blink. And blink again. "And you know how we are. We like to spend our days in the _strangest_ ways. Fasting, praying, meditating on the meaning of life, and infiltrating secret governmental organizations in our spare time."

… The guy was serious. He was serious, and it was because of that that I could only gape dumbly at him. Wonderful sight I was, tainting the awe-inspiring presence of whatever that flower was by looking stupid.

"You know, the usual," he finished glibly.

There was silence as I took turns glancing from the totally immobilized Agent Simmons to the Hermit and back. I honestly don't know why it didn't hit me until then, but the magnitude of what had happened finally dawned on me. Protocol Bad Breath… it was something that had been set up beforehand, and Simmons, the so-called head of S7, didn't know about it, which meant that this old dude had somehow rigged all the cars himself over a long period of time… And the long-range communications not working… and the "fuel malfunction" of the helicopters, that must have been all him too.

It must have taken years of setting up sabotage on top of sabotage for whenever he felt he'd need it.

He was insane. He had to be.

"I am not insane," the man guessed my thoughts, though I doubt it took that big a leap of logic to know what was going on in my head. "And I can prove it, if you can promise not to freak out once the light show starts."

That sounded ominous, but despite knowing I might regret it, I still asked. "What light show?"

The man let his hands rest on his thighs, palms facing up on top of one another, closed his eyes and _hummed_. But it wasn't a _voiced_ hum, but a note that came from him and elsewhere at the same time. A note that traveled _through_ the world, that lasted well beyond the capacity of any human lungs. It was transcendent sonancy at its most basic, yet it completely overturned my world without me even understanding why. I listened, mesmerized, and could only stare as seven spirals of light flared in order, from the base of his spine to the top of his head. Like flowers, with incremental numbers of petals. Colored various colors. White, violet, purple with flecks of gold, pink, blue, green and golden yellow for the top, like a crown with countless petals. "So tell me. Do you see anything unusual about me _now_?"

As abruptly as it started, it ended, leaving me utterly stunned.

" _That_ ," the man said, "is the axis that _should_ have appeared on you just a short time ago, although probably colored differently. The problem is that it didn't."

"Problem?" God, I _squeaked_ again. I hate my voice. It betrays me at the worst of times. "You mean there's something wrong with me?"

Sadly, the S7 agent wasn't going to just reassure me that everything was fine and dandy. "It's not really an axis. It's a set of seven energy centers that keep the four bodies of man connected. The problem is that you only have one out of seven flowers or it looks like it but it can't be true because if it was you wouldn't be alive. You'd never have been successfully _conceived_."

My mind refused to dwell on the theory that my existence could be a _mistake_ so it latched on the other half of the sentence. "Four bodies? What bodies?"

"Well, humans _are_ three out of four parts _insubstantial_. The etheric, mental (pyschic) and emotional (or astral) bodies are tied to each other and the physical one by the seven-vortex axis. Hindu metaphysical and tantric/yogic traditions describe them best. See, they-"

"Right, nevermind that!" I waved frantically, trying to get him to stop what would probably turn into an unending philosophical lecture that would kill whatever time we still had before all the Sector Seven goons woke up. "Just tell me! What's wrong with me?"

"…"

I was thankful he didn't say anything, because I was too busy staring slack-jawed at my hands. My _free_ hands which I'd just started waving about like a madman. Hesitantly, I shifted on the wide seat and looked behind me. Yep, there they were. The handcuffs that had somehow, mysteriously come undone.

Slowly, I turned my head to behold the man, unwilling to believe what had just happened but unable to come up with any explanation other than the impossible.

The part of my brain still functional decided it was a good time to give the man the name "Hermit" and just get on with things.

"Okay," I took a deep breath. Two actually. "Okay. Go on. Hit me. What's this all about?"

"You have no intuition," was the blunt answer. "It's why you don't do well under pressure, and that's just scratching the surface, but it's the most direct path to the root of it." He raised his hand, reaching out for my chest again, and I stiffened despite myself. "Or perhaps _this_ is. You see, the four-flower petal is the root, the part that anchors the bodies together. And yours is not only too large for your physical body, it's also positioned _wrong_. It should be down there, near the base of the spine. The chest is where the _heart_ should be, and there should be two more vortices between it and the root, and three above it."

"…"

"That I can only see _one_ vortex, the _root_ , yet you still live like everyone else can only mean that the other six exist and tie the other three bodies together, but not to the physical one. Somewhere along the way, an imbalance happened."

"Oh." I actually didn't understand even half of that, but it might have been because I was too concerned with my newfound tendency to trust everything Hermit was saying. What was wrong with me? I'd only just met him, and he'd only done some really crazy shit so far. "How can I believe any of this?" I had to ask. For my own sake if not his. "How do I know this isn't just some holographic technology?" I'd just seen Optimus use it to summarize Cybertron's history in immersive 3D, so my concern was totally justified.

He eyed me shrewdly. He knew my words were empty. "Is _seeing_ the only thing you've been doing since I made this appear?"

It wasn't. There were sensations that touched on all my other senses, and even some I didn't know I possessed. Touch, taste, smell and hearing seemed so _limited_ all of a sudden.

His hand was open, hovering in front and above that immaculate, brilliant flower. "May I?"

And for a moment, I wondered if I should say no. All my life I wanted to be normal. To experience normal education, normal friends and normal excitement, but everything that had happened this past week seemed to go against that, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't resent it. What made me so undeserving of experiencing what everyone else had? Why wasn't I equal to everyone else?

But then I figured that it all sounded suspiciously like I was asking "What did I do to deserve this?" and wasn't that a stupid thing to ask? By all accounts, this was as far from a bad thing as anything could possibly get. And wasn't it just an hour ago that I was beating myself up over failing Mikaela and failing Bumblebee? If there was even the slightest chance that this so-called hermit spy could help…

"What's in it for you?"

The man seemed surprised at my question. "Eh?"

"You. What's in it for you? Why would you help me?"

"Why not?"

My mouth moved, but no words came out, but I _had_ to say something. Anything. "What are you?"

Maybe that should have been the first thing I asked.

"A man."

He wasn't lying. Somehow I knew it. But the answer wasn't satisfying at all. A flash of resentment burned through me. Why the word games? Did he find this funny at my expense? Did he think it was amusing that, if he was right, something happened that messed me up before I was even born?

I saw the flower start to turn a horrid shade of puce, and I recoiled from the emotion.

Slowly, the color cleared, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"You know, that's actually remarkable," Hermit said wonderingly, much to my surprise. He'd crossed his arms as he waited for me to reach a decision. "Normally, the root, all spirit anchors really, are tainted by the astral miasma, the emotional waste of the world as it were, the currents of misqualified energy, lamentable emotions of everyone living on Earth. The root is most vulnerable though, since it's a _root_ , reaching deep and firmly into all four planes. Red is most common, associated with the desire for sex." I didn't flush in embarrassment. I _didn't_. "You, though, seem completely unaffected by those currents. It is a wonderful but also terrible trait."

"Wonderful? Terrible?" I parroted.

"Wonderful because it ensures total clarity, of purpose and direction. And of action. Or should, but in your case something is interfering. Terrible because it means you either lived enough lives to balance all your karma, or never had any to begin with, but chose to be born in this physical plane for a great purpose. And yes, I do mean _chose_. Contrary to what people think, we do choose how and where to be born. We just come without memories, because each life is a clean slate, free of the complexes and guilt, or attachments, of the previous life. Destiny is usually a broad goal we set for this life, with guidance from above. For most people, it's to balance, make up for, a certain share of the karma we have left. But those like you who _don't_ have Karma but embody anyway… It means you have Destiny in the grand sense. Destiny you still chose, but the type that affects many. These people can actually choose to recall past lives. That you don't have such recollections… well, I'm not sure what it means. You could be a new spirit I suppose, but you wouldn't have such a large root if that was the case."

I took a while to think about that, no longer caring that time was ticking away. This was _important_. "That doesn't explain why it's _terrible_."

"Because it means your existence will affect others on a grand scale regardless of how you live your life. And the more you waste your life, the worse things will go for those you chose to be born _for_. Because those who embody despite having no Karma of their own do it so they can shoulder that of others, or of entire people. The fate of cities, nations," he pinned my eyes with his, "races from planets far off."

Somehow, I felt that statement should have made me feel like I had the weight of the universe on my shoulders. It didn't. And I was glad, because I'd have probably had a panic attack that would have inevitably concluded with him calming me down but with so much time wasted that whatever was supposed to happen wouldn't have proceeded to completion properly.

And I _did_ think about what he said, and despite my lack of intuition I started to see connections. Things that were not what I would have done under regular circumstances but I, nonetheless, did anyway. Buying the Camaro despite how obvious, in hindsight, it was that it ruined the other cars. Knowing well enough to trust Bumblebee after Barricade's attack and getting in the car. Having the nerve to berate the Autobots, berate _Optimus bloody Prime,_ for ruining dad's lawn and smashing my mom's flowers and the fountain. Despite bowing down to Trent's bullying (unless my mouth started running), I somehow had the nerve to scold a three stories-tall alien robot from a distant galaxy.

God. I really was _not_ normal, was I?

"Was this planned?"

I don't know where the question came from, but Hermit didn't seem too surprised I asked it. "This meeting of ours? Not by me. The most I can claim to have contributed to this confrontation is that I intuitively felt I should be part of the convoy of S7 reinforcements earlier today. Anyone else who may have had a hand in this I can safely say do not have some grand scheme they intend to manipulate or force us into. Ultimately, the goal of those beyond this plane is to ensure potential can be realized, unfettered, for everyone. Nothing more, nothing less."

The vortex in front of my chest flashed a dark orange for a moment, and I suspected it was my faint anger showing. "Will you stop being so deliberately vague?"

Hermit looked apologetic. "I'm not being deliberately vague. It's just… words will never really be enough to share all the information you want, so I try to speak in words that allow for more _meaning_ to seep through. That you don't 'get it' is because you don't have intuition. And I'm sorry but I have free will as much as you do and it's my choice to try and transmit as much as possible. We don't exactly have a lot of time here."

I stared at him in disbelief. I'd just complained about him holding things _back_ and he was saying he was doing the _opposite_ of that… Was it really just me taking it all wrong? "So…" I started carefully. How should I phrase this? Is God real? Do angels exist? You're saying that you can run into those tentacly energy beings from Stargate if you squint hard enough? "Those beyond this plane?"

He smiled, an oddly approving one, praise-filled even. Praise for me having enough guts to ask the question. "You didn't _really_ think that Primus, who gave just _one_ planet life, was the One God of the entire Cosmos, did you?"

So _that_ was the name of the AllSpark's creator. Come to think of it, Ironhide swore by him a lot while I was looking for my grandfather's glasses.

If anyone asked me before if I was a spiritual man, I'd have probably said no. Unless I wanted their approval, in which case my mouth would probably start running like usual and ensure I made a fool of myself and failed to gain their approval anyway.

Now, though…

The man extended his hand again, hovering above that flower. "May I?"

With a deep breath, I nodded. May as well get it over with.

Hermit closed his eyes and focused, and I felt… something pass through me. Like the thrum of a really powerful subwoofer, but that was it. Then a second, and a third, and it seemed to be reaching farther from me each time. But when I saw the confused, almost frustrated frown on the older man's face, I knew something wasn't going as planned.

I got my confirmation when his eyes snapped open and he looked more worried than I'd ever seen anyone. He kept staring at where the white flower was no longer visible. "We'll need to go outside for this." And without further ado, he pushed the car door open and held it for me to follow.

Which I did. What else could I have done?

I couldn't stop myself from looking around, trying to spot the platform trailer Bumblebee had been strapped to, but I didn't see it anywhere. My heart sank at the realization, but it was pretty dark, despite the half-moon and stars, and there were no streetlights on the highway, so he was probably a bit farther down the road.

I followed Hermit to where he'd stopped a dozen paces or so away from the van. "Okay, what's going on?" I demanded.

"What's going on is that your three insubstantial bodies are out of whack." He gestured almost helplessly, and I realized with alarming concern that he was out of his depth. "They should be concentric spheres, with you smack-dab in the middle, but the signals I'm getting paint them as anything but. I'm going to try and increase the wavelength of their passive emissions for a while, bringing them into the visible spectrum temporarily. Hopefully that will tell me what's so strange about you and why."

"Oh." Once again I didn't understand much, but I think the core of it got through. "Okay."

He held his hand out, palm spread over the space in front of my chest, then he lifted it as if stroking a curtain.

A _wave_ washed over me, from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head, then went higher and higher. I don't know how I felt it, maybe it was because it was still _me_ that the wave was passing through, but I could tell it reached about seven or eight meters up. Then it settled and began to radiate outwards, and as the white flower appeared again, so did the other six, one by one, only instead of being anchored to my body they were in the air, each above the rest.

And then the rest of me came into view, like concentrated fog that became translucent glass, and I could do nothing but stare. That was no sphere. That was no standard geometric shape.

I felt like I'd been dumped in an icy lake. This couldn't be happening. It just _couldn't_.

"… Well." Hermit said after a while, gazing in sheer surprise up at… me. The me all the way up there. And around me. "This is new."

"What?" I screeched, and my psychic/etheric/astral all-in-one self _vibrated_ with my disbelief. "That's all you can say! What is wrong with you?!"

"With me? Don't change the focus of this exchange of experiences, kid."

"Exchange of…!" I breathed in and out. Standard procedure when trying to force back an emerging panic attack. "This… this isn't a prank right? You're not just shitting me here, right?"

"I'd have to devour you first before I could do that."

"Augh!" I threw my hands in the air and smothered the urge to pace, because if that huge, robot hologram started to walk along with me, I'm not sure what I'd do. "I'm a robot! A bloody robot!"

"That's the form your insubstantial bodies have taken, yes. Seems they had to merge in order to create something cohesive enough to maintain the integrity of that blue sun. Congratulations. You've already covered three quarters of the road to Ascension!"

"Stop joking!" I shrieked again. God, I hated my voice for always cracking under stress, did I mention that yet? "This is serious!"

"Apologies, but it is fascinating, and not just to me." There was actual awe in his voice as he craned his neck to look at that star. That blue spark – I had a bloody _spark_ – that hovered in front of the pink, twelve-petaled vortex of my heart.

His tone actually gave me pause, and I finally realized that he wasn't worried at all. I grabbed that confidence and kept a hold of it, bringing down the throbbing of my racing blood pump. Hesitantly, I took a step forward, and when the representation of the rest of my _self_ stayed put, I forced my feet to take me over to where Hermit was.

And when I was there, I turned around and looked at what was supposedly the rest of me. It was a humongous thing, like a translucent hologram of – holy _shit_ – an Autobot. An autonomous robotic organism from the planet Cybertron. The shape wasn't completely consolidated, and it didn't remind me of any particular vehicle, but it also didn't seem complete yet. There were flowing edges, where gossamer strands seemed to still be weaving together, and the center of the chest was… the flower was more like a wormhole that spiraled outward and forward, maintaining a sort of containment field around my… my spark.

The missing six vortices were all there, I noticed. The violet and orange ones between the root and pink heart (what do you know, pink really is the color of love), and even the blue, green and gold above it, each with a myriad more petals than the last.

All of a sudden, a different strand materialized, coming straight from the center of the spark. It was white in color. Hermit grabbed a hold of it and saw my _history_. "The spark wasn't always that large. It started out smaller, small enough that it fit in the secret chamber of the heart. But it integrated the threefold flame, the expression of divine love, wisdom and will that all humans have. It _became_ the secret chamber itself. It became your identity, so I guess we could say your _identity_ , _you,_ were birthed by something else in addition to the divine source of me or anyone else on this planet. That spark is something made to assimilate your entire immaterial being, your soul, mental and emotional bodies all in one. But it wasn't _made_ for humans. The structure was different, made for physical and metaphysical beings of a different sort."

"Mechs," I guessed. Not that there was much room for other theories.

He nodded. "Of a mystically aware sort most likely. So because you had no physical means to sustain the spark, your mental and emotional bodies adjusted on their own, based on the image your spark had, since they can only ever outpicture _you_ , and the spark _is_ you so to speak _._ But as they grew and merged, they left your body unable to keep up. Had you had access to the proper teachings and nutrients, your physical self might have progressed well enough to prevent this disparity between concept and reality, but that's not the case. So as the wavelength and size of your immaterial self progressed, the imbalance with your physical one became too sharp, and caused a schism. Your brain didn't receive anything from above anymore. Given that, it's astonishing you can actually function relatively normally. Your brain actually evolved significantly to be able to make up for the lack of intuition and ideas. Somehow it subconsciously permutes all possibilities available to you and provides the best it can find in order to fulfill your purpose of a normal life. Because in absence of intuition, you subconsciously realized you couldn't hope for anything better."

I felt distinctly ill at the revelation. I was spiritually handicapped. Literally.

"This also explains your inability to do anything properly under pressure but run." Wait, it did? "You can't intuitively decide on the fly how to deal with tough situations, so your brain floods you with all the possibly worthwhile ideas it can think of, so you end up babbling or succumbing to the only thing that can overrule your mind, namely the fight of flight instinct. And since we've already established your, sorry to say it, sub-par physical condition when it comes to anything other than speed, well…"

"Fighting would never cross my mind." I succumbed to the urge to rub my forehead. Holy crap, I was messed up bad. "And you're saying I chose this?"

"Not this outcome exactly," he hedged. "But to… take? Accept the spark? Wherever it came from? I honestly do not know. There was some choice involved, I can assure you of that. Otherwise the ones above would have interfered. Of the same divine source or not, you're still of _us_ , like everyone else with sentience. We'd not just leave you to fend for yourself. From what I can gather, the spark –don't ask me why it appeared or from where – was bonded to you after your initial creation, so I _can_ say that you didn't exactly lose anything. Your spark may have engulfed the flame, but it did not replace it, and everything else of you did come from wherever I did. And look." He pointed at the violet vortex between the root and the solar plexus. "The white sphere in there. That is the _soul_. You have both a soul _and_ a spark. It's really amazing. Whoever did this could only have sought what they saw as best. It just didn't all go as well as it could have."

"So…" I was afraid to ask, but I had to. "Am I still human?" And to think that so short a time ago I was ashamed of that race.

"Oh, you're fully human," the hermit spy said immediately. "You're just not _only_ human."

From there, we both just continued to look at… me I guess. The blue-white hue of the robotic figure would glimmer at certain intervals, and the spark, as wide as I was tall, gave off solar winds. It genuinely looked like a blue sun, even held in that makeshift forcefield projected by my heart. It looked so majestic. Too majestic for someone like me. I wondered… had it kept evolving as it did, would it have broken off from me along with my higher self and taken a life of its own? Would I have become the world's first human without a soul, or anything to look forward to after death? Could life as limited and flawed as that even exist?

Would the world have suffered me? I suppose with my talents in running away I could have become a decent enough messenger but…

"I have upset you."

No shit, Sherlock! I almost snapped at him – it looks like I only ever have the guts to do it to people who want to help me – but the root flower was right in front of me and the dirty blue that had tainted it (the blue of my _depression_ ) flared with such noxious, black flecks that I recoiled from the emotion again.

I wondered… if people could _see_ how ugly these negative emotions made us, would we, as a race, actually act differently? Would we change enough to deserve the goodwill we keep being shown?

The intensity of my _heart's_ light faltered, and the containment field around that spark wavered for an instant.

I looked at the strange man, silently requesting an explanation, but got none. I took that to mean that if I had any intuition to speak of, I'd understand on my own.

But I still didn't think I could bring myself to agree, so I did what any normal teenager would do. I procrastinated. "What's that?" I pointed at the white string spiraling all around my psychic self, the string he'd grabbed in order to _read_ me.

"Life thread," he said. "The one that chronicles your _self_. And these," he waved a hand, and a myriad of other strings, silver-colored, appeared, all heading outward, like the pins on a hedgehog. Only they meandered, wisped around and through each other, but all intersected in the same spot in the center of my heart. I noticed that eight of them were thicker and brighter than the rest, and five of those seemed to be made of _words_. Symbols like… like the ones the AllSpark had all over it in Optimus' retelling. "These are fate threads. Each one connects to someone with a direct stake in your life, and branches out and links to those that can affect you through association with the one on that end."

I saw a look of thought cross his face, before he grinned and reached out for one.

Of the five that tied me to the Autobots, one bent, extended and glided over towards us, so that it was within arm's reach. And when it was close enough, the crazy hermit spy grabbed hold of it and _pulled_.

I gave a gasp of alarm when a section ripped, but calmed down when the halves of the thread reconnected as though they'd never been severed. But the small piece that had been torn off was still in Hermit's grasp. "Watch." With a flick of his finger, it formed into a loop which he began to manipulate as if playing cat's cradle. And when it was somehow stretched and curled on itself, again and again, looking like a ball with countless intertwined points, he pulled it outward.

The sphere washed over us both. It practically exploded, overtaking us and everything else, the car convoy, the whole street. Something like fog and flames flickered over it, engulfed it, engulfed _us_ and then we were standing outside what could only be a human home, with a swimming pool taking up half the back yard.

Over the next few minutes, I was treated to a clear view of a meteor crashing down from the heavens… right into the swimming pool. And the time it took for Ironhide to get his bearings was all a little girl needed to creep out of the house and get a perfect view of the Autobot climbing out and stepping over her, utterly failing to be inconspicuous.

But the grand prize went to the little girl when she blandly asked "Are you the Tooth Fairy?"

What happened next wasn't Ironhide's fault. Really! Or anything that happened, exactly. It's just that after finally getting beyond the bearable level of absurdity earlier when I heard about Protocol Bad Breath, I just couldn't help it.

I fell on all fours and started to laugh hysterically. And I couldn't get up or even look up from there. Not when the vision ended, not when all noise other than my laughter stopped, not when my _ghost_ faded from view. And not when I collapsed the rest of the way, still laughing even though I was on my back by that point. And with my eyes shut I didn't even get to enjoy the view of the night sky.

"And _that_ ," the Hermit said, distinctly pleased with himself. "Is called _scrying_."

Had to hand it to him, the guy knew how to sell his merchandise.

Sometime later, I finally ran out of energy and my hysterics tapered off. I was lying on the road, gasping for breath. I almost expected my parents or Mikaela, maybe Bumblebee to be hovering worriedly over me when I opened my eyes to find the past day had been just a bad dream, but it was still just me and the old guy out in the middle of nowhere.

A while later, I was finally standing again, and by the serious look on the agent's face, I knew I couldn't stall anymore.

Not that I needed it. I'd already decided what my answer would be. Even if I didn't gain any magical powers (that sounded stupid even in my head), if this was actually going to let me stop being such a loser, if it meant I could actually do something that _mattered_ , there really was no dilemma to speak of. "Can you really fix me?" I hated how plaintive and vulnerable I sounded, but scrap it all there was no one there to witness it, so there!

"Not really - " I felt like the world was about to crash down on me – "But I can intercede for those that can."

I almost yelled at him for joking about this, but his expression made me bite back my heated words. Somehow, with a clarity I didn't possess before, I realize he really had only answered my question. He just didn't want to lie, so he said it that way, even though it pushed all my wrong buttons.

"… Will it hurt any worse than getting thrown around by big robots?"

His gaze became distant for a second. "Apparently, it won't hurt in the least. Although your physical body may go through some changes. Nothing outwardly obvious though. But honestly, are you going to waver at this stage because of a minor worry like _that_?"

I wondered on what planet anatomic changes under no anesthetic were considered minor, but stopped myself because time would just be wasted on such a discussion. Besides, he'd implied I was chicken, and Sam Witwicky definitely was not! "Fine," I said, sounding braver than I felt. "What do I have to do?"

Hermit cracked his neck a few times and rotated his shoulders, as if to loosen them. "Just be sincere in your acceptance." He raised his hands, until his palms were at shoulder level, facing me.

Still wary but somehow insane enough to trust my life into the hands of a virtual stranger (who knew, maybe my intuition was already working? Erm… backwards in time?) I lifted my hands, and let him intertwine his fingers with mine.

"I know it doesn't usually work when people say it, but I need you to relax."

I tried, I really did, but my heart just kept beating faster and faster.

And then that strong, serene note _hummed_ again, and tension flowed out of me so quickly it may as well have just been my imagination. I felt like nothing could possibly harm me anymore. Not while that note still sang.

"Easy now, young one," It wasn't Hermit speaking at that point. The countenance was grander, and his eyes shone _green_. In entirety, not just the iris. Like green flames, they _blazed_ and did not worry me at all. "Do not fear what comes."

And for some reason, I didn't. I let him (let _Them_ )spread our arms wide, and I leaned my head forward, letting our bodies press together and his (Their) forehead rest on mine. And before what was coming started, I mused distractedly that I didn't even have the slightest idea which religion's gods I was about to come into contact with.

Gentle, patient amusement _breezed_ through me and I got my answer. _All of them_.

As far as the rest of the world was concerned, it was over in just under a minute.

For me, it was enough time to live through the birth of a universe and experience my life all over again. Something passed through my four bodies, diffused them, removed their shape, returned them to their natural, spherical state, from before they'd been warped by an identity I'd assumed but failed to live up to. The spark contracted – no – my _mind_ expanded, my immaterial self grew even as the spark became smaller, yet none of those parts of me ever really changed, because size was relative and, at that level, it didn't really _matter_.

My spirit axis moved, contracted. My spark settled perfectly in the secret chamber of the heart, and then all the seven anchors that were supposed to hold me together finally bound my four components properly. They flared on me, from the base of the spine to the top of my head, and interposed, coincided with those of the person acting as channel for my healing.

In one, eternal moment, I experienced _everything_.

Then it felt like I was being wrung in all directions, as if ants were crawling beneath my skin and through my bones. And as bizarre as it felt, it fell short of being uncomfortable. For the first time, I was in perfect sync with three parts of myself I never realized I'd lost contact with, and I could feel my physical shell _change_. My insides were shifting, my lungs had stopped working but that was okay because whatever was happening was taking care to cycle air through them anyway, giving them all the time they needed to do what they had to do.

Through it all, the only thing that came close to being disconcerting was how my head felt. How I relived my entire life in reverse, with startling clarity. And with each scene that flashed before my eyes, each memory as perfect as the day those things happened, I could feel my mind becoming lighter. Clearer. _Emptier_ but in no way _bad_. As if I was offloading the memories, as if I was shedding all the bad but necessary habits my conscious and unconscious mind had acquired over the years because it had no other choice in absence of the rest of me.

Things got decidedly weird, though, when my recollections went past the two year-old mark and I relived my toddler-hood, and even the very early days, up to and including last three months when I was still in my mother's womb.

I would have reacted, _somehow_ , but all of a sudden, no memories remained. For an instant, I knew nothing. Not who I was, not even that I was supposed to _be_ someone.

But then everything snapped into place, and for the first time in my life I felt _whole_. Just before those beings, gods or not, retreated from me, I felt completely in tune with the rest of the universe. I knew myself and I knew _Them_.

And I _remembered_ that allowing this disparity had been my _choice_. Because if I had been in any way remarkable during my early life, I would not have been left alone to make my way like any other prodigious youth. Not with my grandfather's history with Sector Seven. The government would have been all over me in a blink, suspecting alien involvement or repercussions, and who knows where and how I would have ended up?

Then it passed, but while the communion with the entirety of creation ended, I realized I could still feel much. I knew where everything was within several hundred meters' radius. Where all four vans were, where my parents were sleeping, where Mikaela was unconscious in the van nearest to the side of the road, still handcuffed but otherwise fine. Her purse was squashed inside a side compartment of the van, placed there by the agents, preventing a certain fake phone from doing anything other than wait.

I even felt where Bumblebee was strapped to that horrid trailer, still on ice – because despite that the four men traveling with him had been knocked out somehow, the trailer had been _made_ to hold transformers, and could maintain the liquid nitrogen flow on its own.

Then even that awareness left me, but despite how much _less_ than before it was, I could finally, honestly say, for the first time in my life without it being a lie, that I felt completely fine.

Unfortunately, that only made one of us.

Henry – I knew his name now, that much had been revealed to me during our meeting of _spirit_ – tipped forward and I almost collapsed under his weight. Somehow, though, I managed to lower him to the ground. Let him kneel and hang all over me anyway. His breathing wasn't labored, but it was shallow in another way. Like his body couldn't muster enough energy to work his ribcage to the desired extent.

"Oh shit!" I, of course, became alarmed. "Oh shit, oh shit!" Oh shit! It never even crossed my mind that doing this for me might incur a price!

"It's not a price," he mumbled from where his forehead leaned into my shoulder. "It's just… You know, an antenna doesn't really catch a good signal, or send it, if it's made with too many impurities." He pushed himself back until he was sitting on the ground, supporting part of his weight with his hands. "I spent practically my entire life purifying my bodies, but it's hard to do it fully for the physical one when all the food you can find is at least 25% made of crap."

I blinked in shock. For some reason, I didn't expect him to be so crass, even though he'd hardly been all zen-like during our dealings. I kept my mouth shut, though, as I knelt in front of him.

"And when beings so pure make contact with you, they do us the favor of burning away all the bullshit. But you can't light a candle without burning the thread. Unfortunately, my body is still kind of used to living off the crap that likes to interfere with communions like this, and when the crap disappears, It makes me feel great, a lot more aware, a lot more at peace, but also really weak since the makeshift fuel this old shell works on is mostly gone."

"Oh…" That… that kind of sucked. And seeing him looking so sallow… it wasn't awesome. "I'm sorry."

He blinked and shook his head. "I did say the benefits outweigh the bad. And it's my own fault, not theirs. Besides, it beats spontaneous combustion any day."

What? "What? That actually happens?"

"Sometimes, people at their final incarnation balance out their karma and don't have attachments, or responsibilities, left in this plane, so they decide to just move on. And since it's hard to assimilate only worthwhile substances over one's life, usually the whole body ends up burning to nothing when _fusion_ occurs, and they have to build a new one from the ground up, or they just decide to stay as pure energy in the higher planes. Or both."

God, this sounded so _fascinating_. I never used the word before in my life, but damn! I had so many _questions_ now-

Henry tried to climb to his feet, but swayed. I moved forward to help him, and I pulled one of his arms over my shoulders. "Thanks kid," he murmured tiredly as I helped him up. "Think you can help me back to the van? The rear seat is fine. At least this way I won't have to play dead."

Wait a minute. What was he saying? Wait! What was _I_ saying!? Doing?! I still had to do something about mom and dad, and Mikaela. And Bumblebee! And Mojo!

"Oh Crap! What am I supposed to do now?"

Henry started chuckling weakly from where he was dragging his feet next to me. He glanced sideways at me, and I saw his eyes were back to their normal black, but more sunken in than before our communion. "You're the only sentient being here with free will that will still be self-aware four minutes from now, and you're asking _me_?"

I suppose in that context it really was a dumb question.

Paradoxically, that reaction of mine made me feel better than ever. Even after what I'd just gone through, I was still _me_. Just better. No, the word just didn't seem good. I was _more_ than I was.

I walked Henry to the van, then helped him settle and watched as he easily fell into slumber. I inwardly decided that I'd corner him for more talks later. For now, the main question was whether I should deal with a certain fake cellphone _first_ , or leave it and everything else in my girlfriend's purse for last.

I turned to leave, but was surprised by a hand grabbing my wrist. "Samuel…" It was the first time he addressed be my name, and it made me stiffen. I looked back down to see him looking at me. "Give me a couple of days before you tell anyone about me, alright? And I don't mean Sector Seven, but your Autobot friends. And your parents and the girl."

I wasn't sure what to think about that request, but I could feel it was the least I could do for him. "I guess two days isn't too long to wait…"

"No," he said, and I somehow felt there was more meaning in his words than he let me see. "It's not much time at all."

Feeling something heavy pass over us with those words, I watched him drift off. Hoping to find more sense in what had happened, I tested my newfound intuition and tried to guess what it was all about.

Nope. Nothing.

Feeling oddly cheated, I got out of the van and took a deep breath. I wasn't sure what to do next, but I knew how it would start, whatever it would be.

Remembering what I'd felt during that moment when I knew where everything and everyone was, I chose my direction and made a beeline for a certain, hellish platform trailer. Hopefully, by the time the rest of the Autobots caught up, I'd have come up with a plan.


	3. Cute, Cuddly and Everything But

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Autobots reunite with Bumblebee only to witness some rather peculiar (and unnervingly insightful) human behavior on the part of the human Samuel James Witwicky, descendant of Archibald Witwicky.
> 
> Also, Ratchet gets enough of a reason to question whether or not he himself is glitched, not just Bumblebee.

Even with Bumblebee's emotional forewarning, what I found surprised me. And it was not only due to how the human vehicles were spread over the road as if they had been knocked around by Ratchet suffering an overload-by-power-lines. The tracks on the asphalt were expected also, and seeing the boy functional and even walking around brought an unexpected pang of relief to my spark, though it did not compare to the effect Bumblebee had on me. The sight of him standing under his own power, seemingly unharmed after his ordeal…

No, what gave me pause was the pile of handguns and other human-made weapons near the side of the road. And how the young human kept walking from the pile to every van and back, bringing along any other weapons he could find and dumping them unceremoniously on top of the others, thus steadily adding to the size of the pile. And he seemed to be gathering the cellular phones and other portable comm devices as well, in a smaller jumble next to the first. All of them with their batteries disconnected.

It made me feel foolish. How did we neglect to scan for those means of communication earlier? Sensor adjustment due to unfamiliar planetary conditions was no excuse for this. If we had relieved the humans of them, the second wave of government forces would not have been called and Bumblebee would not have been captured.

Ratchet transformed from ambulance to bipedal form before I did, and by the time I changed from my alt mode as well he was already running scans on my scout. Ironhide soon approached the yellow bot, laying a servo on his shoulder. By the looks of their optics, they were having a private conversation.

But Bumblebee's gaze did not stray from the small human for any extended interval. Beside me, Jazz leaned back on his heel struts and signaled me that he, too, had noticed it.

In all honesty, I could actually understand the young bot's concern. Bumblebee and the steadily growing gun and telephone piles were located near the trailer platform, and _that_ was right at the end of the convoy, and we had to drive around the vans to get to them. And through it all, Samuel Witwicky gave us barely a passing glance. I saw relief in it (and I was still amazed that he could trust us to this extent despite one of our own race trying to kill him less than two joors ago) but otherwise he paid us very little attention. He just waved at us as we passed him by on our way to Bumblebee and continued to practically loot the government vehicles.

"Ya know, I'm feelin' kind of ignored here," Jazz spoke next to me. After making sure our youngling was being well looked after, he had joined me in watching the boy. "Our novelty factor can't have disappeared already, right?" It had, apparently. To Samuel Witwicky in any case. It felt strangely reassuring to receive such easy-going treatment from a native, so soon after our arrival. "Scope it, boss bot, he's checking out their IDs."

It was true. Though the boy relieved everyone he could find of their weapons and means of communication, he took nothing else, except the wallets or whatever else they kept their papers in. And he always put those back where he found them after taking a look through their contents.

Ratchet had, of course, scanned two of the cars and their occupants on the way over, and he had also already studied the leftover gas. He found it to be a harmless airborne sedative. He also concluded that the humans would stay unconscious for at least another hour, so I did not need to rush any explanation out of the boy or my scout. For now I was content to wait until Ratchet concluded his examination of Bumblebee, or Samuel finished his plundering.

My shoulder pads almost shook with restrained amusement at that last thought.

Unsurprisingly, Ratchet had an update first. _:Bumblebee's systems are all green. But that raises questions of its own.:_

_:Such as?:_

_:Such as why his scans of the boy produced this.:_ He sent me a data burst, and when I saw the virtual hologram forming in my HUD I had to admit that I, too, had no explanation for what I was seeing.

_:I suppose you will need to scan him yourself.:_

_:No slag.:_

_:I will bring it up with him.:_

It turned out that, if nothing else, whatever happened here gave the boy a better sense of timing, because he finished looting the convoy right as my conversation with Ratchet reached its end. Even then, however, he did not turn his attention to us. Instead, he stood there, next to the gun and phone piles, but facing one of the vans. The one van which, I belatedly noticed, he had not yet opened. He just stood in the light of one vehicle's still active car lights, with his left hand on his hip and his right rubbing his chin. Just _thinking_.

He had even put on a black trench coat at some point. No doubt taken off one of the agents. It was three or four sizes too big, making him look rather ridiculous. The same could be said of his serious face that was all too youthful for that frown he had on. I imagined the garment, at least, served to stave off the chilly wind well enough.

Walking over to him, I spoke. "Samuel Witwicky." He did not voice his surprise, but he did jump at the sound of my vocalizer. Had he really not noticed me? I did not take care to mask my footsteps, although I suppose the sound canceling technology in our axles does reduce the potential noise of our footfalls by a tremendous amount even at normal settings. "My scout informs me that you may know what has occurred here."

"Divine intervention." It was a flat, tired reply, tinted with a tiny amount of disbelief.

Disbelief that he was actually in a situation where those words fit, I somehow deduced. He did not even look at me when he gave that answer, and I honestly did not know what to make of it.

Perhaps realizing what he sounded like, he blinked and met my optics. "No seriously. That's what happened. Well, that and I realized that my family motto is complete crap, but then that goes for more than half of the supposedly 'wise' sayings and proverbs in the world. What do I call you anyway? I can't call you by name unless you give me permission, and I don't know if 'Prime' is your family name or a title. And calling you 'Big Bot' would be weird, do you guys even use nicknames? I have a feeling Big Buddha would fit to a T, but calling you that would feel like I was stealing the privilege of assigning you that designation from someone else. And no, I have no idea why I feel that way." He shook his head with a weak laugh, looking back at the van. "Man, intuition is so weird. Awesome, but weird."

I did not have any trouble processing that extended reply, but I did have to use four distinct processing threads to do it in a timely fashion. It was a first when dealing with these humans. The boy certainly could speak _fast_. Owing to our research into human behaviors I also realized that Samuel did not necessarily expect an answer to any, or _all_ , of those questions, so I simply waited, using the reprieve to look up "Buddha" on the Internet.

Sam laughed at himself. "Man, before now I rambled like this whenever I was under pressure, but now I seem to be doing it when I'm _not_ under stress."

Appreciating the comparison to the revered historic figure I had finished researching, I knelt in front of him to try and allow us to speak on more or less equal standing. It did not work much better than the first time, as I only became three times taller than he was instead of five, but that did not seem make him uncomfortable at all. Then again, even when we first met he only seemed in awe of us, not fearful…

… At least until we ruined the area surrounding the home of his parental units. Then he threw off all inhibitions and outright ranted at us. Repeatedly. Though not quite to the extent Bumblebee did at Ironhide earlier.

I was going to pursue my initial point, but with almost no prompting my processors brought up the image of the children clinging to my shoulder and slipping, almost falling to a gruesome death into the rotors of the helicopters passing below the bridge I was hanging from. Then it changed to the two of them impacting hard against my pedes as they finally lost hold and fell. I felt a stab of guilt. They would have died painfully had it not been for Bumblebee, and even his catch could not have been painless. "Are you alright, Samuel?"

He smiled with a mix wonder – at my concern – and a ghost of patient exasperation – I knew not what for. "'Sam' is fine. And yeah, I'm okay. Nothing broken or torn, except my clothes." With a flash of insight, I wondered whether the trench coat was really there just to cover his rumpled clothing, or if it was meant to conceal the bruises inflicted by my rough handling of him. Then his expression changed to thoughtful and worried. His eyes passed to Bumblebee and then quickly back to meet my optics. "How are _you?_ "

For an instant, I wondered just how much he saw.

I acknowledged his point as wordlessly as he'd made it. My optics switched between him and the yellow scout momentarily, much like his eyes had done previously. "Better now." Then it struck me that, ultimately, no matter _what_ had happened here, the simple fact was that it had returned Bumblebee to us. To _me_ , fully functional, and without the loss of human life I had used as an excuse to leave him behind. "Thank you, boy." I truly meant it.

Sam grimaced. "Hate to disappoint you, but as much as I'd love to take the credit for all this," he waved his hand, indicating everything. "None of it was me."

I followed his gaze to the one van he had not plundered yet. Or even opened. "Ratched confirmed the use of an airborne toxin."

"Yeah, figured he would. Look, umm… What _should_ I call you?"

Prime would be most appropriate, and all my Autobots would no doubt agree. "Optimus is fine." Bumblebee's broken vocalizer whirred and clicked in surprise in the background, where he and the others had crowded around the two of us.

"Okay. Optimus then. I'm sorry, but I can't talk about what happened he-"

"Can't or won't?" Ironhide interrupted.

The boy _glared_ at the mech with such audacity that I was surprised Ironhide did not bristle at "the nerve of the puny organic" as he would say. He _did_ bristle at what came next, however. "I'm assuming he's the senior and probably your oldest friend here, huh?" Sam asked me. "Otherwise he'd have probably been too self-conscious to just butt into _your_ conversation like that. Especially since you're military."

Bumblebee ducked his head and beeped in embarrassment. Embarrassment for _Ironhide_.

Jazz, naturally, could not miss the chance to throw a friendly barb. "Kid's got ya pegged, Hide. Quick! Interrupt'em some more! I wanna see what else he can figure out!"

Ironhide cussed Jazz quite splendidly in Mechan, our native glossa, demonstrating his mastery of dirty language by transmitting no fewer than thirteen multi-phrase curses in a single, nine-second burst.

Sam, who had returned to facing me and was preparing to resume speaking, snapped his head in the direction of my two immediate subordinates so quickly that I saved a notification to have Ratchet check for whiplash in his medical scan of the boy. And to verify once more if our language produces any sound waves that can harm human hearing, or otherwise affect Earth's inhabitants negatively.

That had been an all too extreme reaction to what, in the end, were only vowel-intensive but ultimately unintelligible electronic noises and rumbles.

With a grimace, the boy met my optics again. "Right. Anyway. I can't talk about what happened here _yet_." I noted that Ironhide and Jazz had quieted once more. "I've been told to wait for two days. I'm sorry if it's not what you wanted to hear."

I did not have time to even process that before Bumblebee's vocalizer started to emit bursts of mismatched sounds and static. He flinched from the sensory overload of allowing his slip of composure to upset his damaged voice box. Ratchet had to pull him away from us to start meddling with the pain receptors in his throat, grumbling all the way about emotional younglings.

I pinged Bumblebee over a private connection, and he belatedly remembered to transmit his concerns that way.

The boy was looking worriedly at the scout when I focused on him once more. "Bumblebee is worried that you, as humans would say, are being blackmailed by whoever or whatever facilitated your release."

"Oh!" There was no indication that his surprise was fake. "No! No, this…" He waved his hands about. "This is all good. No third party or secret agenda. Well, nothing bad anyway. Look, I'm not explaining this properly." With a deep breath, he spoke again, more steadily. "I've been kindly asked, as a personal favor, to wait for at least two days before telling anyone what actually happened here. For their… safety. And, really, it's the least I can do."

"… Very well," I cycled air through my vents. "As long as you can at least assure me that Decepticons were not involved."

"Oh! _Them!_ Nope. No Decepticons. Although…"

His thoughtful turn of phrase was not something I had anticipated.

The boy, to my surprise, shifted on his feet to face Ironhide. "You've still got your arm cannons right?"

The ancient Thetacon growled. I could see he was torn between lingering annoyance at the rude human and delight that someone brought up the topic. "At least you have enough sense to appreciate my Pride and Joy." My weapons specialist brought the guns out of subspace quite gleefully. I secretly wondered how Sam would react if he was informed that "Pride" and "Joy" were literally the names that Ironhide had given his right and left cannons.

Sam _grinned_. "How good is your aim?"

The black bot snorted. "How well can you breathe?"

The boy held Ironhide's stare for a few moments, then nodded resolutely and made a beeline for the one van left untouched. Once he was close enough, he pulled the door open and climbed inside with an air that suggested he knew precisely what he was looking for and where to find it. I leaned to the side and activated the searchlight on my left shoulder pad to both provide him with visibility and to see for myself what he was doing.

I felt my optic ridges rise. He was not rifling through the pockets of the unconscious agents. Instead, he searched through a compartment built into a side panel. He even ignored the existence of his unconscious intended _mate_ in order to successfully retrieve a bag and, from it, a cellular phone.

Humans were such _strange_ creatures.

As if to enforce my conclusion, Sam hastily jumped back out, ran past us to make his way towards the van farthest from the center of the convoy and tossed the phone where the car light of the van landed on the asphalt. "Shoot it!" He shouted, only to be regarded by Ironhide as though he had suffered from processor meltdown. "Shoot it! It's a Deceptic-" The small device jumped in the air and morphed into a small and skittering figure I immediately recognized. "Gauh!" My spark jolted when Sam screamed, but he managed to duck out of the way of the creature as it lunged at his face. And when it repeated its attempts to secure a hostage, the boy managed to turn around and meet Frenzy with a kick to the optics.

I had to admit that, despite the complete lack of grace in that move – though I supposed it would have been far worse if the trench coat had been closed at the front – the kick was quite strong. It hurled the chittering bug through the air, making it disappear into the night.

But only to human sight. My optics tracked it easily, and by the time Frenzy met the asphalt again, Ironhide was ready. His arm cannon released a concentrated plasma bolt…

… which _missed_.

Frenzy had been able to spring away from the ground by arching his spindly, spider-like protolimbs, tossing himself away from the blast…

… and right into a second one.

The end of the least redeemable Decepticon I had ever encountered was a muffled eruption of yellow light and scattered debris. Only tiny shards of metal were left, but there were none larger than a human finger. Most importantly, the head had been entirely turned into slag. A pool of molten cyber metal that steamed as it seeped through the cracks of the crater now decorating the middle of the human-made road.

I turned to regard my weapons specialist, expecting to see Jazz pick fun at Ironhide for not having hit the first time, and I could only go still at the scene I laid my optics on. Ironhide, arm still extended, looked utterly _mortified_ , Jazz was struck speechless by the larger bot's expression and little _Bumblebee_ , his canon still smoking, stared, barefaced, at the remains of the Decepticon he had just blown into scrap.

Ratchet flicked his optics between all three, rolled them and stalked away, knowing that he was going to be ignored from then on, just like Sam's victorious cry of "Yes! Try and pull the pants of people _now_ , creep!"

Bumblebee subspaced his considerably smaller plasma cannon and turned his bright blue but still utterly _flat_ stare onto his age-long trainer.

Then he stalked off in Sam's direction. Intent, I assumed, on checking him for any new injuries.

 _:Bumblebee powered up his weapon as soon as Sam called the shot the first time.:_ I relayed my assumption to my medic as he came to stand beside me.

_:He did. Not sure if that means he completely trusts the human, exactly, but it does show that, despite his worries that something has happened to him, he still trusts him to make sense.:_

_:So the look he gave Ironhide was him being insulted on the boy's behalf.:_ I transmitted.

_:He's become very defensive of his charge.:_

It was plain to see in how the small yellow bot fussed over the much tinier human. And in how he still _hovered_ once he was assured Frenzy had not managed to claw at his face this time around. "Really, I'm okay 'Bee." The boy did not seem to mind using nicknames for those other than myself, I noted. I added the observation to my rapidly growing holofile regarding him. "Awesome shot by the way!" The scout seemed to glow at the praise, then ducked his helm, voice box chiming bashfully.

Twisting my helm back to where Ironhide and Jazz still stood, I witnessed my weapons specialist subspace his cannons and growl at Jazz. "Not. One. Word."

Ratchet snorted next to me, and I knew why. There were quite a few words that would fit this situation. Most notably the observation that Bumblebee had a much smaller cannon and, thus, a thinner plasma bolt to hit the tiny Decepticon with, by comparison.

If Prowl were here, he would have no issue with pointing out that Bumblebee could not have known when and where to aim unless he had _predicted Ironhide's miss_. Some would interpret it as exceptional teamwork gained after eons of training together and learning how to act in sync. Unfortunately, Irohide hated being shown up, and to have it done under _these_ conditions, and for someone to have the nerve to assume he'd _miss a shot_ – and, worse, being proven _right_ – was a big and blunt slap to the face plates of his considerable pride.

The odd pair of human and mech soon rejoined us. I was about to bring up the matter of allowing Ratchet to run a scan on him (though I was still considering permitting it even without Sam's consent) when the boy spoke. "That's one gargantuan security leak taken care of! With this I can actually feel like I helped you enough to ask for a favor without feeling too presumptuous!"

I stared at him, wondering in what galaxy everything he had done – from suffering through our destruction of his property to providing us with the location of the AllSpark and then almost dying and getting abducted because of us – did not warrant at least some aid on our part as reparation.

Before I could say anything, Bumblebee made some intense noises, sending me a reminder regarding his request. Taking Sam's questioning glance as my cue, I finally touched on the matter. "My scout is worried you may have physically suffered more through this night's events than what is outwardly apparent. His scans of you seem to return strange and alarming results." I gestured towards my medic with my servo. "Ratchet would like to run his own. It will let us know if the liquid nitrogen has disrupted Bumblebee's sensors."

I expected Sam to pale or fidget with worry, for his sake or Bumblebee's, but instead he gave me a strangely knowing look. "And you're totally going to back off if I say no." Bumblebee shifted uncomfortably on his pedes at the blatant skepticism. I, on the other servo, was more interested in the underlying humor there. "You can all do the eye hologram thing, right?" I nodded once. "Then if Doc Bot's willing to project one of whatever his scans are showing, then sure. Radiate away!"

Ratched grumbled in Mechan about cheeky hatchlings as he took a step forward. He also commed me privately. _:What in the pit happened to that stuttering, nervous creature of before?:_

 _:Recent developments do not coincide with your initial psychological prognosis?:_ I teased, amazed by how quickly my mood had shifted away from melancholy.

_:Don't make me remind you what the rule is when dealing with someone who knows your insides better than you do, Prime.:_

I would have risen to his barb just for the sake of it – holding a private conversation through the scan would not have even begun to strain our ability to multitask – but I changed my mind when Ratchet began the procedure. A cone beam visible even to human eyes emitted from Ratchet's wrist plates. It passed over and through the boy, up and down, and then the medic projected the life-size hologram of the small human.

Dead silence. Only the faint air currents still registered in my audials, and I toned them down even further than they already were as they were no help.

"Huh," Samuel did not appear the least bit surprised by the hardlight representation of his internal makeup. "Imagine that." And then he turned around and walked off, in the direction of the van farthest off. Bumblebee managed to transmit confusion and worry through his vocalizer despite it being damaged, and after looking between the boy and the hologram showing his internal anatomy, hastened to catch up with him.

Ratched tossed a final scan over the departing human, but the results were the same. "Slagging Pit." He muttered in our own language. "All evidence of internal damage or past injuries that I caught in my initial scan has… disappeared." The hologram increased in size until it was the same height as the medic. "That alone would have been enough to make me wonder if I was glitched but _this_." Cyberglyphics streamed on a side window, showing hormones and bodily fluids, all at optimum level and concentration. But the most shocking were the readings on the nervous system, on the bones and muscles, and even more importantly on the viscera. Peak durability and health, rivaling Earth's best athletes, but most importantly… "Perfect symmetry." Ratches rumbled in awe. "Even our protoforms fall short of it."

I had already added the information on Sam's brain to the holofile, but even the heightened activity and total symmetry _there_ did not hold my attention. No, what my optics could not stray from was the heart, now located right in the center of his thoracic cavity, beneath the sternum. And the lungs were no longer uneven. Instead of one having three lobes and the other just two (to allow room for the heart itself), there were three lobes on both. The space needed for the heart to comfortably perform its function came as a result of _both_ lobes from the lowest pair being smaller. Narrower.

A human chuckle next to me made my frame clank as my back struts straightened in surprise. Perhaps I should not have toned down my audials after all. I remedied the issue in time to hear Sam speak again. "Man, I'm so screwed if anyone finds out about this." But there was no fear there, only a resigned feeling of irony. "I bet Sector Seven would _love_ to play with that."

Behind him, Bumblebee produced a fierce, hostile _growl_ and his optics sought mine out. The message was clear enough. I did not give him the promise he was hoping for, however, and that he did not push the issue told me he would defer to me as always, if ever the time came where we would have no choice but to leave Sam to the fate of a laboratory experiment.

Assuming said fate came at the hands of _humans_.

But unlike myself, Bumblebee did not already have uncountable tragedies on his spark to soften the blow of another taking place. He would grieve forever, and while I am sure I am familiar enough with self-loathing to survive my own self-recrimination, I do not know if I could handle witnessing _his_. Especially since he would most likely not even blame me.

"Hey, it's okay!" I looked down to where the human was trying to reassure the yellow Autobot. "It was just a joke. I didn't mean anything by it." Bumblebee warbled sadly, and I felt a familiar flash of fury directed at Megatron for robbing the young one of his ability to communicate. "Besides, if my plan works, we won't have to worry about Sector Seven at all!"

I internally doubted this boy could truly curb the actions of an entire, government-approved organization, especially one that has shown so few scruples. But Bumblebee perked up, and I was amazed at the faith he seemed to have in the boy after such short a time in his company.

By this point, Ironhide and Jazz had rejoined us. They were glancing between Sam and the hologram Ratchet was still muttering over, but not saying anything.

"So." Sam looked up at me again, though he kept a palm on Bumblebee's ankle guard. "Think you can help me out? We kind of have to hurry since the sleeping gas will wear off soon."

That was one point we all agreed upon. "I would first need to know this plan you speak of."

Sam scratched his cheek in embarrassment. "Well, it's not so much a plan, since I'm gonna wing it for the most part. But it's fine!" He waved his hands frantically, trying to convince me he knew what he was doing. "If things don't work out you can just drive off and find the Cube like you were always going to right? They can't catch any of you anymore, since the helicopters went back to base." He snickered. "Due to a 'fuel sensor malfunction' I believe was the phrase."

It only made me wonder more what in space had occurred here, but I knew I would not get a better answer than before.

He seemed to take our silence as agreement, for he nodded to himself and then headed straight for Jazz, of all mechs. "Hey!" My lieutenant crouched to behold him better. "You're the one that did that magnetic thing that took their guns right?"

"S'right," Jazz said proudly.

He was about to launch into a grand boast of some sort, but Sam cut him off by grabbing one of his digits and tugging him along. "Great! Then you get to come over here." Due to what could only have been sheer surprise, Jazz allowed himself to be led along by the servo. It was an amusing sight that even Ironhide snickered at.

"Over here guys!" Sam called for us, and I decided we may as well play along for now and see what he intended to do.

The boy led Jazz to the pile of weaponry. "Okay. You stand here and look all im... posing…" He looked at us, then at Jazz and the obvious size disparity. "Actually, you stand there looking _smug_. Optimus, you and Ratchet stand over there and look all imposing, okay?" He motioned towards the other side of the telephone and gun piles.

"Hey!" Jazz complained. "No cracks 'bout my height!"

"Why not?" That was Ironhide. "Kid's got you pegged, Jazz."

"Oh, you _would_ be all proud o' yourself, parroting my lines." The small, streamlined Autobot was not amused.

I, however, _was_. Enough that I decided to contribute to the increasingly surreal situation. "What should Irohide do?"

Sam looked at me, surprised, and I realized he had not been about to give him actual directions. Perhaps he was leery of the weapons specialist despite his outer semblance of confidence.

But he narrowed his eyes, perhaps seeing through my act, and faced Ironhide without hesitation. "Him? Hmm." His grin turned positively devious. "Bee." The scout beeped. "Google penguins of Madagascar: The Movie." Then he spoke to the large, burly, ancient Thetacon warrior that had been alive before human civilization existed. The humongous mech that had more explosions to his name than had occurred during both human world wars. "I need _you_ to be _cute_ and _cuddly_ , soldier."

For an instant, my processor fritzed.

Jazz collapsed to his knees and began to slam his servo against the asphalt in hysterics. And over the next half a breem, he kept laughing and _laughing_ so hard that I was amazed none of the humans around us stirred.

With a growl of rage, Ironhide began to stomp towards the impertinent human youngling. "Think that's funny, _squishy_?" His arms began to hum and glow as he prepared to bring his canons out. "I dare you to say that again!"

Behind Sam, Bumblebee looked as though he was valiantly trying not to do what Jazz was still doing. Giving in to curiosity, I looked up what Samuel had mentioned, and could not stop a snicker from slipping out. "Even _you_ , Prime?" Ironhide growled, but I paid him little mind as I wondered how many of his own subroutines Ratchet had turned off in order to avoid any outward reaction _._ I somehow could _sense_ his internal laughter.

Ironhide then stiffened and glared at Jazz. I assumed the latter realized he would be unable to actually _voice_ anything for a time, so he sent a comm instead.

The Thetacon's optics dimmed, and I deduced he was finally looking up the topic himself, likely at Jazz's direction.

As expected, the wide-shouldered bot only snarled harder and rounded on the human, arms almost aglow as the subspace-tapping transformation sequence powered up. "You wanna be vaporized, punk?!"

"That would make Bumblebee sad." Sam countered, as if he was not less than a moment away from having a plasma cannon shoved in his face.

Enraged sneer still in place, the mech nonetheless faltered. He met the yellow scout's optics, and despite himself his expression softened minutely at the deliberately pathetic twist of those optic ridges, and the pitiful scratching sounds of a defective vocalizer.

Even though we all knew that impression of a wounded animal was totally fake, it worked. It always did, and Bumblebee was just as aware of that fact as the rest of us.

"I knew it!" Sam crowed and looked up and to the right, where his guardian stood. "He's just a big softie inside, isn't he?"

Ironhide glowered his best glower, trying to save some dignity. "I'm gonna let that go this once only because Bumblebee likes you. Primus knows why!" His arms were still ready to bring out the weapons the rest of the way, however. "'Sides, I try not to murder fleshlings just because they talk about things they've got no idea about."

"I don't know what I'm talking about you say?" I got ready to step in before Samuel really went too far. "I know of at least _one_ little girl who still believes in the tooth fairy that that would disagree with you."

It made absolutely no sense due to the utter lack of context, but Ironhide froze in what I could not interpret as anything other than horror. It was an alarmingly obvious sort of disbelieving shock, and the first time in a hundred vorns when the summoning of Pride and Joy was reversed mid-completion without some physical damage or technical glitch being to blame. "How… How do _you_ know about that?" The mech whispered in abject disbelief. He looked… looked as if the apocalypse had come and brought the final death to all his potential practice targets.

Sam crossed his arms and grinned as wide as his flexible, organic mouth allowed. "Divine Intervention."

It made me wonder if a Divine Intervention really _had_ taken place this night. I, for one, never did believe what I had just witnessed could be achieved by anyone other than Primus Himself.

Perhaps I was being too harsh on Ironhide, thinking such, but I was not the only one. Even Jazz was staring, slack-jawed. Shock-sparked hysterics replaced by processor-halting amazement of similar cause.

At last taking pity on my third in command, Sam turned around and made for the closest van. "Bee. You're with me."

Completely thrown off, the yellow Autobot looked from me to Ironhide, to Jazz, to Ratchet, again to Ironhide and finally back to me. Then he shrugged helplessly and followed.

Ironhide, still fuming and cycling air through his vents, quietly walked to stand on Ratchet's other side, wrongly believing that mech, at least, would not crack a joke at his expense. Alas, that was not to be, despite him having maintained a neutral composure throughout the entire ordeal. After all, he was not the Devil's Medic just because of his horribly caustic bedside manner. "I have decided that aquatic flightless birds would be a fascinating subject of study once this mission is over." Ironhide went rigid at the casual mention of the Forbidden Topic. "But since ice has proven to be such a danger to our inner workings, a trip to the arctic tundra would be ill advised."

Was he really showing Ironhide mercy? _Ratchet_?

Apparently not. "Perhaps we will be able to procure some from a zoo-"

Ironhide snarled and cursed in Mechan, then rounded on the Chief Medical Officer. "Not. Another. Word!" But he knew that few ever won an argument with the CMO, so he immediately whirled around and stomped off, powering Pride and taking post at just beyond the distance reached by our short-range sensors. None of us were fooled into thinking he was _only_ taking post as sentry, but we let him be.

Well, that was not quite true. Jazz kept pinging and sending him private comm transmissions throughout the next twenty minutes. Internally, I was amazed it did not devolve all the way into a brawl. I was thankful that there was something else to keep my processor focused on, specifically Sam and Bumblebee's activities.

Which consisted of having Bumblebee round up _everyone_ in the vans and sit them on the ground, leaning against one another in a semicircle, where Sam would handcuff them one after another, intertwining the chains as he did. Simmons was placed some distance ahead of them, closer to our position. I assumed the boy was going to try and talk to him for whatever reason.

Once that was accomplished, and their small dog had been brought over and deposited a reasonably far distance away from Ironhide, only his parental units and the female, Mikaela Banes, were left. Bumblebee carried the parents carefully in his servos. The femme, however, Sam did not allow Bumblebee to move. After unbinding her hands, he picked her up himself, bridal-style, and carefully carried her out of the van and towards our position, the youngling trailing behind him like a faithful guard.

When he was between me and Ratchet, he laid her on the ground, propping her back against the car wheel that made up part of my ankle. I shifted my pede for better support, which he answered with a grateful glance, but mostly he focused on her with an expression of fond affection I was used to seeing on age-old sparkmates.

Kneeling before her, the boy produced a cloth out of his oversized coat's pocket and pressed it against her face.

She roused with surprising speed, and I did not need Ratchet to list the signs of a panicked reaction to recognize it. "Mikaela. Mikalea!" Sam's shouts stopped her short, though she had managed to slap his hands away, along with the cloth in it, which I belatedly recognized as a surgical mask. ""Kaela, it's okay! You're okay. We're all okay. Everything's fine, see?" He motioned around him and then up, bringing our presence to her attention.

"Sam?" The girl blinked several times, wrestling with drowsiness until she won. "What happened?" Flicking her eyes from Ratchet to Bumblebee, she squinted at the latter. "Are those your parents? Where are we? What-" her vision must have cleared, enabling her to register the full situation. The halted, disorderly group of cars, with us right in the middle. Figuratively speaking. "Oh."

I did not correct the assumption she must have made.

"Right." Sam stood, facing Bumblebee. "Okay… You can lay them on the ground next to Ratchet. Unless he minds?"

I almost expected him to, but the CMO harrumphed. "At least it will make it easier to run a scan." I shook my head at that. Ah, Ratchet and his scans. "You have not brought them back online," he observed. "You do not intend for them to stand witness?"

Sam winced. "Dad's a tossup, but can you imagine my mom not making a scene?"

"Sam?" Mikaela asked, pulling herself to her feet. "What are you talking about?" Casting a glance over our situation, she asked the predictable thing. "What happened here?" Not unexpectedly, her gaze switched from Sam to me a couple of times.

"I'll explain later," Sam told her. "Well, in two days."

"Sam-"

"Mikaela." He cut her off, facing her fully. "I can't explain right now. I'm sorry, but I can't. Not without ruining things. I know you're confused, and you're probably going to be angry really soon and I'll understand if you'll think me too crazy to associate with afterwards." She opened her mouth but he lifted a hand to ward her off. "And I guarantee that you very well _might_."

That sounded rather alarming, and not just to my own audials.

Mikaela seemed off balance, but she recovered with surprising speed for someone that had just come out of unconsciousness. She frowned, frustrated and even somewhat frightened. "What's that supposed to mean? What are you going to do that's so crazy? Because unless you're going to offer yourself up as a hostage in… exchange… for…" Her eyes widened and her hand flew to cover her mouth.

I suddenly understood.

Even if we did take these humans away, Sector Seven would come looking for them again and again. They could not go back to their homes and they would not last long on the run. But Samuel was the only one they really needed.

"Sam, no! You can't!" Mikaela argued before I could, grabbing him by the hands. "You can't trust them! Or any deal with them!"

"Can't I really?" He echoed, though I got the impression that it wasn't _her_ he was responding too.

Sure enough, Sam smiled sadly but didn't answer anything further. Instead, he faced Bumblebee, who had finished relieving his servos of the parents and had returned to the boy's side. "'Bee, I need you to promise me that if this goes pear-shaped, you'll take Mikaela and my folks and leave-"

Bumblebee's vocalizer exploded with such defiance, anger and confused denial that Sam took a step back, bumping into the girl and almost sending her to the ground. He managed to catch her in time, but the commotion got the scout to quiet down and even warble apologetically.

Sam faced him again, still as determined as before. "I'm serious 'Bee. Take Mikaela and my parents and leave." Bee's optic ridges pressed together and his vents whooshed air in frustrated rage. "I mean it!" Sam glared back, then turned on the rest of us in turn. "That goes for all of you. It was… appreciated the first time, but this time I won't be falling to my death. This time, _I'm_ taking full responsibility, but that also means that if what I'm about to try doesn't work, no one takes the fall but me."

"Understood," I said before Bumblebee could strain his vocalizer further by continuing his protests. It was the first time ever that the scout glared at me, truly glared with helpless anger and betrayal. It pained my spark to see it, to feel those feelings directed at me from _him_.

But there had been so _many_ times when I wished I could trade _my_ life for that of my people. For my planet.

How could I begrudge Samuel the chance to make the choice I so often wished for?

"Thank you." As the boy strained his neck to look up at me directly and say those two words, I again had that odd feeling that he really understood.

It was absurd.

"Hey…" The boy's tone took a gentle turn, despite the almost violent reaction that the yellow bot had earlier. "Hey, come on look at me 'Bee." The scout knelt in front of Sam but still looked away. Hopelessness and grief marred his every move. "Bumblebee…" The optics finally lifted when Samuel reached out to the servos Bumblebee had let lie in top of one another in his lap. "I'm sorry. Maybe nothing will happen, but if it does… isn't it better if only _one_ of us has to be taken? Instead of all of us, or having to live on the run?"

I wondered if Bumblebee realized Sam was doing this for _him_ as well as his human kin. Yes, he did. I could tell from his response, even though the keen my youngling produced held no words in it.

Sam went on. "Because I'm telling you now, my folks can't make it in a life like that, and when they get caught in order to get to me, we'll only be back in this situation again, and you'll feel even more guilty than you're feeling now." The bot reached out to touch Sam's chest with a digit and chittered brokenly. "And if what my gut tells me is true, and I think it is… Making an enemy of the US government is not a good idea if you want to find the AllSPark. You'd probably manage it regardless but… I honestly feel you deserve better than getting labeled the villains just for trying to recover the hope of your race."

Bumblebee keened, then turned on the radio. _"It shouldn't have to be you."_

Sam smiled weakly. "It has to be me."

The scout returned his hopeless humor in song. " _It had to be youuu…. It had to be youuu..."_

"Frank Sinatra," Sam recognized, earning him a strange glance from the female. "What? He was an awesome singer!"

"I know. I just didn't expect _you_ to know."

They both laughed. It was a poor, token effort to lighten the mood, but I suppose the thought mattered more than the act in this instance.

 _:I say we just scoop them all up right now and roll out. Frag the rest.:_ I did not show it, but Ironhide's sudden message startled me. Turning my helm to behold him, I saw he was thoughtfully watching the scene playing out next to me. I did not transmit my surprise at him taking such a stance after the earlier confrontation with the human, but he saw it just from my look. _:Bumblebee likes him. Primus knows why.:_ He turned away from me to watch the barely visible horizon immediately after that.

"Sam…" Mikaela, again.

"I know," and he truly sounded like he did. He faced her, touching her cheek. "But 50 years from now you'll have to figure out whether or not you regret getting into that car with me. And you have to _live_ to be able to make that decision. Not just survive. And if anything more happens to you…" He looked up at Bumblebee "Or _you_ ," then the rest of us, a roaming glance "Or any of you when I know full well I can do something about it but don't..." He faced his intended mate again. "I know _I_ won't consider that living if I survive this."

A private comm line opened, and I expected Ironhide again, but Jazz' subdued voice greeted me instead. _:Kid's got the same issues as you, Boss Bot.:_

I did not reply.

A stifling silence descended, but Sam knew as well as I that not much longer could pass without the Sector Seven operatives or his parents coming back online.

"Right, one last thing," he addressed me. "Did you look up on the Internet where the coordinates on my grandfather's glasses go?"

"Yes."

"Google Maps?" At my nod, he seemed pleased. "Think you can project it for me."

Turning the two-dimensional satellite picture into a three dimensional model was a simple matter for our hardware.

Sam gazed at the hologram for a time. "Hoover Dam?"

"That is what the World Wide Web states."

"I'll never wrinkle my nose at geography again." The boy stretched and cracked his neck to loosen it. "Okay. It was magnificent knowing you all. Now let the hostile negotiations commence."


	4. Hostile Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam "negotiates" with Sector seven and makes Optimus realize that he had not, in fact, understood what the boy was on about when Sam stages a hostage situation.

Let the hostile negotiations commence, the boy had said. Only they did not. Not right away. Whether because the boy was procrastinating or because he had simply forgotten that he had not, in fact, roused the two dozen agents clustered together in the back, he spent the next few minutes moving between them and pressing the pungent surgical mask to their faces. Their reactions to waking up to the sight of their once prisoner crowding their personal space, and us looming in the background, would have been amusing if Samuel's plan had not been what it was.

Finally, only Seymour Simmons was left, and Sam had cuffed his hands together in front of his body instead of the back for some reason.

Crouching in front of him, the boy placed the cloth over his mouth and nose and waited.

Compared to some of the others, his awakening was slow. Once he recognized who was in front of him, however, he went on full alert.

Though it did not do him much good. He actually fell on his back when he jerked away from the face mask.

Sam slowly straightened, returning the cloth to his pocket. I was glad I was not directly behind him. It allowed me to see his profile. For extra effect, I activated the searchlight on my right shoulder and aimed it at their position. Half a klik later, the others, save for Ironhide, did the same.

Sam waited for Simmons to climb to his feet in front of him, then his mouth slowly spread into a smile that to my optics was anything _but_ friendly. "Good morning."

The Sector Seven operative glared at the boy, then threw a wary but still defiant glance in our direction, and a hopeful (then resigned) look at his men, clustered in an unwilling flock some distance behind, before glaring at Sam again. "Good morning." It was a bland reply. I judged it a failed attempt at trying to act as though he still had some control over the situation.

Sam said nothing more. For one minute, then another. He just kept looking at Simmons. Just quietly watching.

And _watching_.

_:And waiting:_ Jazz chimed in the shared comm. _:And waiting. And waiting. And waiting. And watching and waiting. And wait-:_

_:Jazz, shut UP!:_ Ironhide roared over the open line.

After the three minute mark, Simmons was looking decidedly creeped out, as Bumblebee would say. Our searchlights threw his features into sharp relief, so it was not only obvious to us who had biometric sensors on full throttle, but also the small human femme at my feet. What was the boy waiting for?

"Okay, now it's just getting awkward," Mikaela muttered, but when it looked like she was about to walk over there, Sam spoke.

"Are you afraid of them?" he motioned with his head in our direction.

Simmons' eyes followed before he could stop himself, but he put on a façade of bravado. "As if!" he sniffed. "I ain't any more afraid of them than I am of _you_ , kid."

Sam nodded, as though expecting that answer, though his frigid smile never left his face. "I'm tempted to call that a bluff. To attribute it to false bluster, but you really aren't afraid of them are you?"

My optics shuttered briefly while Simmons' eyes narrowed. "You trying to be my shrink now? I haven't brought my chaise longue, in case you haven't noticed."

Sam was not affected. "Come to think of it, you weren't really afraid of them earlier either, when they tore off the van roof to get to us. Afraid of what they might _do_ , yes, but not of _them_." His glare was positively spiteful. "You didn't seem afraid of Bumblebee when you had him _impaled_ and _frozen_ for saving me and Mikaela from a gruesome death at your hands either."

There was the faintest grimace on Simmons' face, but it was gone in a nanosecond. I wondered what it meant, but I dared not indulge in any hope yet. "What do you want kid? Why did you even bother waking us up instead of scramming with your robots? Or is it that you want to unload on me before you have your NBE friends kill us in revenge?"

"Oh no," Sam waved randomly, unaffected by his barb. "They're just there to observe. Though I'm sure Bumblebee is ready to scoop me up in case he sees any danger coming towards me from one of you." I decided to keep a sensor on the scout just in case that proved true and I had to hold him back from interfering later on. But Sam was not done. "What does that say about you, though? That between a bunch of alien robots and my own blood kin, it was the _former_ that put any sort of effort into ensuring my wellbeing over the past 10 hours."

"They wouldn't have had to-"

"I don't want to hear it!" San snapped, and I was honestly surprised he was able to cause the other, older man to go silent. "Not after the two of us were almost hacked to bloody pieces by _your_ helicopter rotors. Not after you used harpoons and liquid nitrogen on Bumblebee for the high crime of saving us from falling to our deaths! And don't you _dare_ launch into a diatribe of how dangerous and untrustworthy these 'aliens' are when the only reason you even caught Bumblebee, the only reason any of you are even still _alive_ , is because he let you! Because his commanding officer gave explicit orders to all his soldiers to refrain from attacking humans with those cannons they can turn their arms into at any given second. Told them not to attack, even in self-defense!"

Simmons was about to retort. Express his skepticism or launch some sort of rebuttal, or even state he had nothing to justify to Sam, but I never got to know which.

Sam got in his personal space before he could get a sound out. "He let his prized subordinate be taken," he hissed, and I felt guilt stab through my spark, despite knowing he had not meant to harm me by it. "Ordered his weapons specialist to stand down instead of letting him shoot the helicopters, because he refused to even risk loss of human life!" He poked him in the chest. " _Your_ life, you asshole!" Sam held the glare for a good while, before he stepped away, though his eyes still pinned Simmons. "I don't expect much from goons, but I'd like to think that at least those in charge of an organization, _any_ organization, would come closer than a cockroach to exemplifying the best humanity has to offer! So far, I've had to live with the disappointment."

"Whoa…" Mikaela Banes whispered from where she stood at my feet. "That was harsh…" Bumblebee clicked at her surprise and she smiled ruefully. "I had no idea he was such a good speaker."

Sam was in full throttle. I was impressed despite myself. "It would have actually been somewhat understandable if you _were_ afraid of them, but you don't even have _that_ excuse. Not for hunting them, not for illegally arresting us, and definitely not for being so smug about it and your ridiculous do-anything-and-get-away-with-it-badge." At that, Sam pulled out said badge from his right pocket and tossed it away like a piece of scrap.

Simmons followed it with his gaze, then threw Sam a dirty look.

Though he did not contest any of what the boy had said. Strange.

"They say we humans are afraid of what we do not understand," Sam started after a few moments.

"Oh, so we're advancing to philosophy now." Simmons only muttered those words, but I had adjusted my audial sensitivity upwards, so I heard it clearly.

Sam also heard it, but he chose to ignore it. "They _say_ that, but it's not really true is it?"

That took Simmons aback, and it also took me by surprise. I would have expected Samuel to give reasons for overcoming that flaw in human nature, not to completely disagree with what humans considered an age-old axiom.

"You didn't fear the Autobots, and you don't fear them now, even though it's clear you don't understand them and don't _want_ to understand them either," Sam left his position, circling him as he talked. "But I'm not surprised. After all, 'we fear what we don't understand' is just one of the many flawed sayings humanity has raked up over the years. All in the name of blaming human nature for our excesses. A means to persuade ourselves it's not our fault. That it's God's fault so it's okay to be greedy, or proud, or spiteful, or hateful." He stopped and spun on his heels half-way, pinning Simmons with a one-eyed stare. "We humans really do seem to like our _lies_."

_:Boss…:_ Jazz commed in awe _. :Are ya' recordin' this?:_

I did not even dignify that with a response. We recorded _everything_. Constantly.

"So you think you can prove wrong what millions of people considered and still consider true," Simmons hedged. "That's bold, kid. Pointless, but bold."

"Oh no!" Sam waved again, standing completely at ease. "I don't really need to. I, at least, would like to believe I'm not that insecure. Anyone willing to see past the length of their nose would find it obvious. After all, if it _was_ human nature to fear and seek to harm and destroy, then all children would be sociopathic killers. But they're not. Then again, if it _was_ in human nature to fear what we don't understand, we wouldn't live past the emergence of our rational mind. After all, a child doesn't understand air, but it's not afraid to breathe it. A child doesn't understand the sun, but runs around during summer anyway. Children aren't afraid of strangers. Children aren't afraid or even wary of sharp objects, even though they should at least be cautious. Instead, the more we grow – the more we _do_ understand – the more afraid we become. And since many go their whole lives without seeing an angry animal or suffering an accident, the only conclusion that remains is that we rake up that fear _because_ we understand what those things – too much sun, lack of air, sharp objects – _could_ do to us. And most importantly, we rake up fear because we understand what other _humans_ do or could do to us."

I had allowed Samuel to take up the task of confronting this man believing I knew what to expect, but I had just been proven wrong. With each new word coming from his mouth, I, Optimus Prime, found myself in awe of him. That one so young, even by his race's standards, would be so eloquent. Ratchet knew well to ask where the nervous, stuttering, pheromone-overwhelmed Samuel Witwicky had gone.

Below, Mikaela let out a gust of air. "Okay. I'm not sure where this is going anymore, but I don't think I mind listening for a while."

I, however, did. It was hard enough to let Sam proceed with his plan when I thought he was only trying to negotiate a hostage exchange. But now, as he was picking apart Simmons' logic, _human_ logic, in an attempt to reach to him, a potential result of very low probability even now, I wondered if I could walk away now that I was coming so close to thinking _he_ was as close as I could hope to find to the best that humanity had to offer.

Sam hummed and faced Simmons fully again. "Ultimately, it all boils down to _control_." He waited, _daring_ Simmons to try to throw a jibe. He did not. "Fortunately, the same arguments as before apply here, so at least I can be reassured that the desire to be in control of everything else is, also, not part of human nature." He made a step towards the S7 agent. " _Bizarrely_ , though, people exhibit that very tendency alarmingly often." The mock-wonder coloring his voice seemed to set off alarms in Simmons' mind, going by how pronounced the latter's grimace became.

Too long had passed without the disgruntled agent getting a word in edgewise. "You realize that preachers are the ones most renowned for putting people to sleep, right? You should have just let that gas run its course at this rate."

"And there we go!" Sam seemed positively _delighted_ by that interruption. So much that both Jazz _and_ supremely worried Bumblebee snickered over the comm line. "An attempt to gain _control_ over the situation! Thanks for so awesomely proving my point!" Simmons' mouth curled in distaste. "Though I guess you never really totally lost control over the situation, did you?"

My optic ridges raised, and Simmons seemed earnestly surprised.

"Earlier, when Optimus Prime first cornered you after you abducted us," he gestured in my direction. "You said you're not _authorized_ to tell him anything. Except to tell him as much. And now, despite how obvious it is that you would love nothing more than to verbally trounce me – not that you could…" He let that thought settle. "You've been holding back in order to avoid spilling any secrets with them nearby."

Simmons looked grudgingly impressed.

So did Sam, and the lack of spike in his already elevated heart rate told me he, too, meant it. "I assume you're worried that you've been dosed with a truth compound or something in addition to the sleeping gas?" The head agent's face remained carefully blank, but the same could not be said about those of the others. "And the erratic body language you exhibited not too long after awakening… I assume those were code signals telling your men to keep their mouths shut too?"

Upon that deduction that amazed even I, Seymour Simmons showed real astonishment. No for long, his defiant and irritated mask came back swiftly enough, but it was there. "You've been holding out on everyone kid."

Sam snorted. "I'm the direct descendant of the man who claimed to have discovered an 'Ice Man' in the artic." Simmons's expression faltered briefly at the mention of Megatron, and I knew Sam had not missed it, but he plowed on. "I'm a descendant of the man who then spent the rest of his days writing and babbling about strange symbols that any linguist would be able to identify as a _language_. I am a descendant of the man who was deliberately discredited later in life. By two people who did all they could to persuade the world that Archibald Witwicky had _only_ gone insane." Sam then laid on the sarcasm as thick as it could possibly get. "Now picture the descendant of that man showing high intellectual capabilities early in life. _Obviously,_ said descendant would be allowed to progress at his own pace, like any other prodigy. _Certainly_ , he wouldn't have to fear _in the least_ that he'd suffer the same as his great-great-grandfather. Or that he and his loved ones would be carted off by secret organizations in the middle of the night. After all, there is _no_ chance that said organization would suspect his higher brain functions to be the result of alien meddling instead of plain human evolution."

As I saw it, Simmons boggled at that so-called revelation. Sam had never actually said he had done what he implied, but the agents would no doubt make their own assumptions. I knew better than to be fooled, and I knew Sam did not even intend for us to believe the same, but the ongoing speech only left me more baffled. More curious about what could have caused this change which was clearly beyond merely physiological at this point.

I felt something softly hitting my ankle wheel, and when I looked down I saw the femme bumping the back of her head against it. "I _dare_ him to get on my case about my secret juvie record after this. Just let him _try_."

Bumblebee whirred in amusement.

"Why the look?" Sam challenged Simmons, either not hearing or paying attention to us. "Is it any different from how _you_ hide behind obfuscating stupidity in order to keep some _control_ over the situations you find yourself in?"

Simmons' entire composure slumped. He dropped his head, releasing a sigh, then he stretched his shoulders as much as his still handcuffed hands allowed. When he met Sam's gaze again, he was still irritated, showing that his previous manner had not all been an act, but the absence of most of the tension was quite telling.

_:How many of you were fooled by his idiot routine?_ : Bumblebee asked on the shared comm channel.

_:I admit to some surprise at this turn of events,"_ I answered. It was true, though it was also true that agent Simmons was only in my presence for mere minutes before the disaster of a joor ago, so I had justification.

_:I thought somethin' was weird, but ah' thought it was obvious to the rest o'ya, so I didn't say anythin'.:_ Typical Jazz.

_:… Ironhide?:_ Bumblebee pressed.

_:… You're never going to let this go, are you?:_ I almost had to pull down my facemask to hide my mirth.

Bumblebee pounced on the opportunity. _:Cancel that decacycle of basic drills and you have a deal.:_

_:Fine!:_

_:Thanks!:_ The youngling chirped _. :Oh by the way, I didn't see through it either!:_

_:Why you fragging little sneak-!:_ I forcefully shut down the shared connection. If they were going to bicker, they could do it on their own resources.

Ratchet commed me privately after that. _:I was able to synthesize the airborne sedative and am standing by to apply it to the parental units to ensure they do not rouse and endanger the delicate situation by panicking at an inopportune time.:_

That _did_ make me pull down my battle mask.

With all pretenses gone, Simmons moved things along. "What do you want kid?"

I interpreted that to mean that he was not going to consent to any dealings with _us_ , but he would indulge _Sam_. My frail hope dwindled in the face of the likelihood of all humans eventually showing the same reluctance to communicate directly with the Autobots. But I reminded myself that Sam was human also, and that Simmons had refused to acknowledge even _him_ until a short time ago.

"Nothing else than what you or anyone else would. Control," Sam tilted his head. "That is, after all, what it all boils down to, doesn't it? We don't fear what we don't understand. We don't fear _aliens_ because they're alien. _Other_. It's just another prejudice on a long list. We fear them no more than we fear strangers. No more than we dislike their physical forms based on conventions we've subconsciously chosen to class as normal. _Safe_. No, the only reason we have to fear others is if they have _power_. And the only reason we fear their _power_ is because, subconsciously, we envision the possibility they could use that power to gain control over _us_ and our lives. Or rather, to remove _our_ control."

That really _was_ the root cause of conflict. Of _fear_. Unfortunately, most races I encountered only seemed to see it when justifying cruelty. And, heartbreakingly often, that cruelty was what qualified, in their minds, as a preemptive strike against what they considered dangerous. It was not quite as unfortunate as deriving actual pleasure from that cruelty, but it was a stance which could cause almost as much damage.

"You agree, don't you? Now that it's been pointed out to you." Sam reduced the distance he'd placed between himself and Simmons by another step. "Do you _understand_ me, Simmons? Truly understand?"

"And if say I don't?" His look and tone gave nothing away.

The frigid smile returned to Sam's face. "Then you won't begrudge me if I do what any other _human_ would do in my shoes." He offhandedly indicated us, even though his heartbeat climbed slightly higher than his nonchalance outwardly suggested. "Openly bask in the feelings of safety and relief provided by the presence of my allies." Bumblebee chirped in delight. Delight and hope that Sam wasn't going to offer himself up after all. "Feel content that my parents are out of that van and away from _you_. Gloat, maybe, that my side has the bigger guns."

Ironhide really did _not_ have to power both Pride and Joy, but I could understand why he would be caught up in the moment. Away from the rest of us as he was, and as the only one who did not have a light aimed at the humans, he must have looked like a suddenly there, terrifying, looming giant when the shine of his cannons abruptly illuminated his frame in the deep dark of the night. The dark that must have seemed all the deeper to the humans whose eyes had had to adjust to our searchlights.

And if one giant was there all along, hidden, they must have wondered… how many others could there be?

"I could destroy your weapons in front of you. Have the same happen to your communications devices," Sam mused, and with each new suggestion he made another step towards Simmons, until he was almost within arm's reach. He was facing me now, however, which meant that the left side of his body was out of Simmons' line of sight. "But there's one thing that would work best for me." Reaching in the pocket of his oversized trench coat, he actually shocked me by pulling out a handgun.

Mikaela gasped in astonishment and Bumblebee clicked in surprise at the sight of Samuel Witwicky slowly, casually lifting the gun and pointing it right into Simmons' face. "Negotiate from a position of _power_."

In all honesty, I was equal parts astonished and alarmed. Sam must have picked up the weapon when he briefly walked off after Ratchet ran the scan. Otherwise we would have known about it.

My weapons expert opened a shared comm just so he could express his reaction. _:Holy. Slag. Didn't even suspect he had it in him…:_

_:Ironhide…:_ I tiredly chastised him. This was no time to erupt in _admiration_ , of all things.

Simmons, I noted, did not even flinch. He did start sweating more than before, and he let some worry slip when the gun barrel ended up between his now wider eyes. Then he winced when he heard the large group of agents collapse in a heap behind him. One or more of them must have reacted too abruptly and, handcuffed together in mixed up daisy-chains as they were, managed to pull everyone else down with them.

"So what do you say?" Sam asked glibly, worryingly at ease for someone who had a loaded gun pointed at someone's head. That my sensors did register a small irregularity in his heart rate was a minor consolation. "Got it in you to barter?"

My grudging respect for the head agent went up a notch when he refused to falter. "Sorry to say it, kid, but you can't intimidate me with just a gun. Besides, I don't think you have the guts to pull the trigger."

"Oh, I promise you I will pull it before the end of our conversation," Sam pronounced ominously, and I was starting to worry that whatever had occurred to change him may not have been so divine after all. But the tenser the situation became, the more I realized that moving to interfere in any way would only do harm. Simmons would panic or just do something rash… Was this why Sam had let me assume he was going to offer himself instead of… of _this_?

"And It's not just the gun," Sam continued. "If I'd expected you to fold to _that_ , I'd have asked Ironhide to come closer. Or maybe Bumblebee, since it was _his_ gun that took out that Decepticon over there." He nodded in the direction of Frenzy's resting place. Simmons didn't like it, but he looked where he was being pointed, and Bumblebee helpfully moved his searchlight to that spot. "The Decepticons are the bad robots if you were wondering," Sam noted, then he glared. "And he was disguised as a cellphone in one of your _vans_. The same one you shoved _Mikaela_ into."

Seymour Simmons actually winced.

_:Sweet Primus, by the way he wields guilt and misinformation you'd think he's a priest.:_ Ratchet grumbled, on the open channel for once. _:Reminds me of someone I know_. _:_

_:Actually, Ratchet, thos're politicians,:_ Jazz chimed.

_:Don't you tell me about politicians, brat. I was in the Senate, in case you've forgotten!:_

_:Ah' can see why. The rest of'em would never admit it either.:_

Knowing how Ratchet would react, I left the conference, pondering Sam's ability to bring out both the best and the worst in my mechs through sheer insanity.

"Okay," Simmons tried to move things along, or buy time given how his eyes were shifting, looking for a way out or hoping backup would suddenly come, but finding none. "Might as well hear it. What do you want?"

"Well, VIP treatment would be nice. For us _and_ the Autobots," I did not need to be an expert in human behaviors to know how _that_ request was received, although I sincerely appreciated the attempt. "Also, Mikaela's juvie record. I want it gone, _forever_."

"Ha!" Simmons blustered. "And what do you think could persuade me to do all that?"

"Information." The answer did not surprise me overmuch, but I did wonder if it was really necessary to go through this entire farce. Ironhide would be right to say we may as well have shoved a gun in the man's face and forced him to listen to us from the beginning. "Information that you don't want getting out." Ah. My assumptions had been once again proven wrong.

Simmons laughed. "Who could you tell? Who would believe you?"

"The Russians." Simmons' laughter tapered off. "The Germans. The Chinese. The Japanese. Take your pick."

Simmons glared. "You're bluffing." At Sam's unimpressed look, he backtracked. "You don't know anything important."

"Hoover Dam." Even without my sensors notifying me of the abrupt spike in Simmon's heartbeat, I would have known that hit a nerve by how pale the man turned. "That's the location of the Cube, am I right?" It was too late to really hide the unwilling confirmation from us. "And by the way you reacted when I mentioned the Ice Man earlier, I'm guessing you have a mech there too. So Sector Seven was created to 'deal with' them and research aliens, right? Run experiments and dissection? Indulge me, if you will, is he really big and chrome-grey, with claws instead of fingers and a really nasty-looking face?" My systems froze at that realization, and I inwardly cursed myself for not reaching it sooner.

Megatron and the AllSpark were _in the same place!_

Primus save us all.

Simmons's mouth had slowly opened with each new assumption that Sam had candidly voiced. The boy had lowered the gun, but the other would probably not have even noticed it anymore at that point. "The way you captured Bumblebee was pretty efficient, which means it was a tried and true method. I'm guessing you keep the harbinger of death on ice the same way?"

The silence that fell lasted so long that I had time to wonder what a miracle it was that no civilian cars had driven by ever since we'd caught up with the disabled Sector Seven convoy. And it was a long time indeed as I, too, had to process the new urgency that our mission had just taken, reassess parameters and switch up the priority of our objective.

I felt literally like I was standing around while waiting for a ticking time bomb to detonate.

"…Harbinger of death?" Simmons croaked.

"Megatron," Samuel blandly informed him. "Leader of the Decepticons. Came to Earth looking for the Cube Optimus over there launched into space in order to ensure it was out of his grasp. Bad enough that the Universe decided that random trajectory had Earth at the other end, but you and your organization just _had_ to take them both to the same place. Great _job_ by the way. If Megatron's megalomania didn't ensure he'd try to enslave us all, conducting live dissections on his insides definitely did it by now!" He concluded dryly.

Simmons mouthed silently, then shook his head, lapsing into denial. "No. No, Sorry kid, but you have to admit that sounds too farfetched. It's too much. No way it could all have piled up like that."

"Crazy or not, it's true. At least that's what I'm assuming from your total failure to debunk my assessments." Sam countered. "Megatron wants to use the cube to transform Earth's technology and basically take over the Universe. A lofty and impossible long-term goal, granted, even for beings that are functionally immortal and have lived for longer than this edition of the human civilization's been around, but madmen never seem to mind. Believe me or not, it doesn't matter. What will happen will happen, and when shit hits the fan I'll be sure to let everyone I mentioned before know whose fault it was. Can you picture their reactions to learning you've been sitting on this secret since before the first world war? Then you can be proud of having singlehandedly ruined the United States of America and probably the rest of the planet."

The agent struggled for a counter. Any counter. "It's NBE1. That's what we call it. And you're painting these things as more dangerous than they are. You forget _we're_ the ones who caught _them_." His eyes flickered to Bumblebee, who growled in disdain.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Because I'm _sure_ Megatron was in any better position to fight back than when my twice-great-grandfather found him. And we already established why you were able to capture Bumblebee."

Simmons drew himself to his full height, and there _was_ a visible disparity between his and Sam's, but it did not faze the latter in the least. "You can't go to the Russians or anyone else with this! It's a matter of national security!" Ah, he tried to reassert his authority while playing the boy's assumed patriotism.

"The authorities then," Sam agreed all too quickly. "You're absolutely right. I'd like to think I live in a free and fair country, so in theory I would only have to reveal to the authorities the way you abducted me and the others tonight and my life would get back to normal." There was no way Sam could be that naïve, and Simmons knew it. It was visible on his face, not just my bio-sensors. "I could even strengthen my case. Point out that the speed with which the troops showed up at my house, and the sheer amount of them, imply there's always been some in Tranquility. Meaning Sector Seven has been spying on my family since forever." Simmons was grinding his teeth at this point, and I felt Bumblebee shift in anger over Sam's stolen freedoms. "And the speed with which you got reinforcements means probably all of Sector Seven is out in force too for some reason. I wonder why…" I, too, wondered, but the possibilities brought up by my processor were too worrying to focus on at this time. "Lots of things to get you jailed over, and Sector Seven disbanded-"

"That'll never happen." Simmons said, completely certain. Then he smirked. "Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but it really won't."

"Liar," Sam chimed, no more rattled, outwardly, than before. It was positively _worrying_. "Of course it'll happen, unless you're implying that we don't live in a free country. That Sector Seven is somehow exempt from the constitution?" There was no confirmation nor denial. "That you're allowed to steal the rights and freedoms of everyone else?"

No answer.

Sam had his gun to Simmons's face so fast that the man finally flinched. "By _rights_ ," Sam started lowly. Menacingly. "I can shoot you right now and call it self-defense."

Bumblebee started. So did Mikaela, but she had long ago been rendered speechless.

_:Er, boss bot. The kid_ **_is_ ** _just pretendin', right?:_

_:Yes Jazz.:_ I had no doubt Sam would never lower himself to murder a prisoner. Even if these psychological clashes reminded me of Decepticon tactics too much to feel comfortable watching them happen. I could not believe that the boy who had comforted Bumblebee so earnestly earlier could sink so low.

Apparently, neither did Simmons, though likely for different reasons. "Hey kid, calm down." He raised his hands in front of his face. "Careful with that thing unless you want an accident on your conscience."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Did you forget already, Seymour Simmons?" The gun was perfectly steady in his left hand, and even my sensors did not perceive any major fluctuations in Sam's blood pressure, beyond the initial rise that had never wavered. "I made you one promise earlier. What was it? Do you remember?"

I rolled back through the conversation and realized what he was implying two seconds before the man himself. Simmons held his arms even higher, palms out in surrender. "Hey kid, stop joking-" he barely had time to throw his hands in front of his face and duck his head.

A gunshot sounded in the night.

Compared to our own firearms, it was loud and lacking in grace. It scared all the humans out of their skins, and made Bumblebee take a step forward in near-panic.

Simmons was thrown on his back with an undignified scream of fear. His back struck hard against the road and he covered his head with his arms, which were now free due to the bullet that had smashed through the thin chain previously connecting the handcuffs together. When he realized he was still alive, and no longer bound, he froze in disbelief and confusion, looking at his hands, then at the boy who was still standing over him, his gun pointed at his chest but otherwise unmoving.

Distantly, I realized that the noise had finally managed to start rousing Samuel's parents from their induced slumber.

And Mojo.

Making a split-nanosecond decision, I commed Ratchet with an order to not gas them back into unconsciousness. The human operative would likely react unfortunately if I or my Autobots tried to interfere to stop this madness, but perhaps Sam's parents…

Now if only they actually got a move on with their awakening, Primus slag it.

Below, I sensed Bumblebee relax and the female collapse to the ground in boneless relief. "He's dead," she vowed with the sort of manic fervor one entered upon being put through a harrowing experience. I had to admit this qualified perfectly. "He's so _dead_ when I get my hands on him. Freddie Krueger and Jason Voorhees will seem like harmless, handicapped little _puppies_ after I'm done with him."

That threw me for a loop, but Bumblebee proved to be his ever so helpful self and sent me a link to an article on an online encyclopedia about human motion pictures. Had my battle mask not been in place, I doubt I would have been able to conceal my reaction of bewilderment and mild concern – not only for Samuel's sanity (and safety, I supposed) but for Mikaela's faltering sanity also.

"Seems even I can pull off a point-blank shot," Sam said to the gasping man lying at his feet, voice level despite having heard everything Mikaela had said. "How did it feel? Did you feel scared? Helpless? Confused, maybe, by this disproportionate retribution? Did you ask yourself what you did to deserve this? Just now, did you ask yourself why you'd end this way after you've only been doing the best to serve your country? We're making abstraction of all your gloating and related jackassery at the moment of course."

"You," Simmons gasped, eyes straying from the gun to Sam's face and back. "You're crazy, kid! Crazy! Nuts! Bonkers! Mad!"

"Maybe," the boy admitted easily. "Maybe it jumped two generations and I inherited it from my great-great-grandpa. But that means I have an excuse, right? What was _yours_ when you tormented Bumblebee, essentially putting him through everything I just put _you_ through, only worse? Can you guess how _he_ felt?" Bumblebee's vocalizer revved in surprise, then rumbled. His posture had changed, I noticed. He was wringing his servos in front of him. "Helpless? Because he was forbidden from defending himself, so yes, I suppose. Scared? Not of death, I don't think, but that he'd failed his charge or commander? Definitely." And Bumblebee _would_ have felt that way instead of feeling betrayed by _me_. "Confused by how you responded to his act of saving two of _your_ species at his own expense? Maybe not, since you've been hunting him for ages, but you can be sure he was disappointed."

My sensors alerted me to a rapid rise in Simmons' pulse, and it was clear by how his lips came together into a sneer that he was about to try and-

He screamed, flinching and covering his face again as Sam released a second shot, which impacted against the asphalt next to his head.

The gunshot noise made the boy's parents finally start awake, and I allocated some resources to trying to figure out means to conduct damage control once they emerged from behind Ratchet's pede and saw what was happening.

"Get up!" Sam snapped at the agent.

With a glare, Simmons got to his feet with as much composure as he could, which was not much.

Then he could only gape stupidly when Sam flipped the gun he was holding and held it out for Simmons to take.

In all honesty, I could understand that reaction, since it coincided with my own quite wonderfully. I was _truly_ glad I had my battle mask on. My jaw piece had not dropped, exactly, but…

I wished Bumblebee was a bit farther back, closer to me, so I could see what _he_ looked like.

Then, as if the situation was not already beyond the level of absurd this reality should have allowed, Samuel's parental units chose that particular moment to notice they were lying amidst the feet of giant alien robots.

Naturally, they panicked.

I gave into the impulse to press two digits against my noseplates when the screaming started, but despite the rest of us spectators' attention snapping to the new commotion, I kept most of my focus on the main scene. For that reason, only _I_ saw what happened next and, consequently, only _I_ was able to make sense of what happened after that.

After a momentary grimace, concentration and _opportunity_ flashed in Sam's eyes, then he jumped forward, pressed the gun into Simmons right hand, using the chance to put the safety on. Then, moving before Simmons could react, he used his free one to reach for Simmon's _left_ , to pull it along as he spun on his heel, pushed back against the agents chest and quickly grabbed the one that was now _armed_ and-

Bumblebee's voice _cracked_ , bursting into outright _panic_ , and he surged forward half a step, then he whirred in despair, pacing frantically left and right as he helplessly looked at Sam when-

"SAMMY!" Judy Witwicky screamed in fear when she laid eyes on her son, just in time to see him, and Simmons right behind him. And with the agent having one arm around his neck and the other holding a gun at Sam's temple, one did not need to possess a tactical computer to know what _that_ looked like. The fact that Sam was forcefully holding Simmons' arms in place while the latter was struggling to pull free from that compromising position only made it seem as if _Sam_ was struggling against _him_.

"Nooooooooh!" Darth Vader screamed from Bumblebee's radio.

Primus, _why_?

It was at that point that I truly regretted not bringing any high-grade Energon along on this mission. I will know better than to go against Ironhide's suggestion next time.

And how the frag did I recognize who that voice clip belonged to? Oh, I remember. Bumblebee watched a Star Wars marathon at a human 'drive-in theater' once and I learned of it in his subspace-transmitted holoreport.

I let out a whoosh of air from my vents. Why did I ever agree to this?

"Oh god oh god oh god oh god!" Simmons squeaked. His voice had well and truly taken a shrill nuance as he tried and failed to fight off both panic and Samuel's surprisingly firm grips at the same time. I thanked the stars that the boy had taken care to switch the gun safety on before he pulled this- "Madness!" Simmons wheezed in Sam's ear. "You're mad! Insane!"

I actually agreed with him. If nothing else, Sam had made human and Autobot see eye to eye. Perhaps that was the entire point? To unite us against the common foe which was his mental questionability? I was ready to believe anything at this stage.

"It's your fault, you know," Sam said between gritted teeth, too low for the humans next to me to hear.

"My fault?!" the man holding the gun shrieked. "How is this my fault!?"

"SAMMY!" Judy Witwicky proved her vocal capacities once more. I drily noted that we giant alien robots had suddenly become irrelevant compared to the sight of her son being 'held hostage.'

"If youuuungh didn't _act_ so much," Sam gasped out while keeping Simmons' increasingly frantic arms in place. "I'd've beeeennnghh able to figure out by now if you had a conscience." Simmons paused his struggles, either realizing Sam was stronger (deceptively so) or waiting for him to drop his guard. Or just to catch his breath, or perhaps all three, I was undecided. "But since even showing you exactly what you put Bumblebee through didn't seem to work, I'm left with having to take drastic measures."

"So what?" Simmons yelled from behind him, bravado swimming against the tide of shock. "You were just teaching me a lesson, is that it? Put me in his shoes?"

"Got it in one," Sam said. "Though you'll likely dismiss it as soon as possible because I'm too 'young' to know anything. Hence this." Simmons tried to pull away, but Sam was on to him. My sensors had long ago confirmed their chaotic vitals so I turned them off. "Come on, it's only fair. Go ahead. Negotiate from a position of _power_."

"He's crazy,' Mikaela blurted, shaking her head. "Hate to agree with that creep on anything, but he kind of is."

Judy gasped at her voice, at last noticing she existed, and Ron followed soon after. They both pounced on the girl, figuratively speaking, as though she was the only thing or person that made sense in that whole situation. And perhaps she was.

I did not envy her.

By that point, I had ignored too many uncertain comm hails so I sent my Autobots a data burst that explained the real state of things. Bumblebee's posture only marginally slumped in relief.

"Let go of my baby!" Sam's mother wailed. "My baby! Sammy, hold on!"

"No! _Don't_ hold on! Let go!" Simmons wheezed in Sam's ear. "Kid, why? Oh _why_ is this happening? What's the point?" He asked. I was fairly certain his despair was not totally fake even without my sensors.

"Well-!" Sam gasped wryly. "At this point I'm graspinnnggh at straws, so I figured that if you hhha-ave a problem with shooting a kid's brains out in front his mother, you might have a conngghhnscience after all. Unfortunately-"

-"Let go! Let go of my baby! Oh, if you harm even a hair on his head I'll kick your ass!"-

"-At this point I'm probably more useful as a human shield, so that plan is toast," Sam concluded hopelessly. "Guess this whole mess has backfired on us both, huh?"

Sam's father had taken to holding Judy back by this point.

Mojo woofed.

"Both? Both?!" Simmons shrieked. "Oh no. On no! You're not taking me down with you, brat!"

"Yeow!" Sam screamed and jumped away when Simmons sunk his teeth into his hand.

Ecstatic to be free of his hostage (those words should _not_ have been able to make sense, but they _did_ ), Simmons tossed the firearm and retreated from the apparently unstable teen.

"Sammy!" Judy yelled, breaking into a run with Ron right behind her, right when Samuel himself shouted. "You bit me! Are you crazy? You _bit_ me!"

"They _are_ nuts, both of them," Mikaela breathed.

"Me crazy! Am _I_ crazy!?" Simmons yelled at Sam, pacing left and right just like Bumblebee had been doing not that long before. Bumblebee who was now scurrying towards the boy and his fussing parents as quickly as his pedes allowed. He was almost upon them in fact, then Judy Witwicky noticed and- "Aaaaaah!" realized the giant alien robots had not been her imagination. "Ron!"

"Judy!"

"Dad-"

"Son-"

"- all nuts! Crazy!-"

"Sam-

"-all of'em crazy!-"

"Sam!"

"Mikaela-!"

I decided that even if I did have a long list of failures from which to choose something that could justify being put through this, I could take NO MORE. " **SILENCE!** "

The bullet-proof windows on every single van abruptly _shattered_.

Then, nothing moved. Not even the wind. All was utterly still in this corner of the middle of nowhere, but something was still rankling, and I knew what it was. Making sure to glare at _everyone_ for at least half an Earth second, I turned my annoyed optics upon my weapons specialist.

Ironhide meekly turned off Pride and Joy, eliminating even that subsonic annoyance.

Peripherally, I noticed that Ratchet had gassed Mojo into unconsciousness. If he had been on a payroll, he would have received a bonus for that alone.

Primus be praised. Sweet peace and quiet at last.

I advanced on the humans, not even bothering to hide my irritation as it flashed in my optics and poured out like heat waves. I also did not bother telling them that the reason the glass shattered was because I emitted an ultrasonic burst meant for just that purpose. Let them assume it was my voice alone that caused it. "That is enough!" I snapped, and my sour mood was not fake. "We stay here and bicker while your world's doom looms! Shameful! Samuel!" He yelped and snapped to attention, even with his mother still clinging to him. "I appreciate what you tried to do, but there is a fine line between conquering people with reasoning and baffling them with nonsense. A line you have long since crossed!"

The boy bowed his head, and the only reason I did not feel bad for scolding him was because I had the sneaking suspicion he had been gunning for me to react this way from the very beginning. Either that, or it was his so-called intuition that led him to this, and the less I thought about _that_ , the better. I was not altogether sure this _intuition_ he spoke of was such a wonderful thing anymore.

"Ron and Judy Witwicky," the parents warily looked up at me, looking every bit the part of children caught misbehaving. Just like Sam himself. "I understand your reactions, and admit that awakening to this situation was not something anyone would have been prepared for. However, your actions after you recovered your senses were unacceptable! Humans are taught as _children_ that losing one's temper and screaming never helps."

I expected the female, at least, to shoot something back, but the shattered car windows must have made an impression.

"Bumblebee." I was not keen on doing this to him, but it had to be said. "You knew full well Sam's parents would not react favorably to you essentially charging in their direction. They could not have known you shared their worry for Sam's wellbeing. They could not have known you only wanted to make sure he was safe and sound."

My scout bowed his helm and chimed, looking apologetic.

"Quite honestly," I cycled air through my vents in an effort to calm down, for all intents and purposes sighing. "The only one of you who faced this whole ordeal with any degree of sense was Mikaela Banes."

"Hey!" Simmons protested, but that only gave me the cue to start on _him_.

"And _you_ , Seymour Simmons!" I rounded on him, and the man shrunk from my heavy gaze. "If you had just agreed to exhibit some of that reason and wisdom humanity likes to boast it possesses, Samuel would not have felt driven into a corner in his attempts to get you to listen to us for a few minutes. I am only thankful I was able to put a stop to this situation before he _truly_ went forward with his original plan. Which was to offer himself as a hostage in exchange for the freedom of the other three."

Even the tied-up agents still struggling in a heap in the background made a disbelieving, hive-like noise at that revelation.

The tension only got thicker when I revealed that bit of truth, and had it not been for my looming, seemingly angry frame and the persisting psychological effect of the shattered car windows, I have no doubt Samuel's parents would have started on him in some fashion.

"Why you… Why you… you…. God dammit, fine!" Simmons yelled and threw his arms in the air. "Say your piece! At this point I'm willing to believe anything is possible!"

"Umm…" Sam hedged, forcing the words through the air-stopping hug of his mother. "I already told you pretty much everyth-"

"NO!" Simmons yelled, turning at him and making cutting movements with his hand. "No! You shut up! I've heard enough from you so quiet! Stay silent! Don't say anything! Silencio! Digas nada mas, hombre! Capische?!"

"But-"

"No! If it's between a crazy kid like you and only _possibly_ crazy alien robots, I'll take my chances with them!" He even pointed a finger at me as he concluded that official pronouncement, still snarling at the boy. He looked like he had well and truly been pushed to the end of his rope, but he was gasping with the exertion and exhilaration of finally getting Samuel to stop speaking after such a long night.

Throwing another roaming glare, I reached up to the side of my helm and activated the hardlight hologram projectors in my optics. "Before time began, there was the Cube…"

I gave everyone the same story as the one I outlined to Samuel and Mikaela, but given Simmons' status and the high likelihood of him knowing of classified projects like the Ghost 1 starship, I added the story of the human vessel we encountered half a century ago in a different star system. It was a tactical risk, since the encounter resulted in the destruction of the ship and the deaths of the crew. But I doubted Sector Seven could like us any _less_ at this point, so even if Simmons took it badly it would make no difference even if we ended up being haunted by the ghosts of yesterday after this.

The reactions of the humans were a gratifying mix of interest in the story, worry over what it meant for Earth, and awe at the means of transmitting it. Simmons seemed to listen closely to everything I was saying, and I was pleasantly surprised to see his eyes narrow in consideration upon my sincere revelation of the Ghost 1's fate.

As I finished and let the hologram show the sight of the Cube for a time, I studied the reactions of my audience. My optic ridges came together when I noticed a glaring absence. Two of them in fact. Sam and Bumblebee. I knew the other Autobots were behind me, but my Scout was not in formation.

Unexpectedly, Jazz commed me. _:I'll go ahead an' project some more stuff. Maybe some music, or some bad stuff Megs did. You got somethin' to deal with, Boss.:_ He finished with a short-range locator beacon, so I looked where he indicated.

When I did, I wished I had not. No, I wished the sight that met my optics had not had to come to pass.

There they both were, quite a ways behind everyone. Sam was even out of sight of the cluster of agents, having hidden on the other side of a van from them. Bumblebee was kneeling and leaning over the human, cycling air through his vents for warmth but otherwise looking worried and frustrated at being able to do nothing else for the boy. The small, so _small_ now, organic that was curled on himself, covered by that large garment he'd pilfered. He was _shivering_ against the scout's knee plates. Trembling and breathing thinly as he wrestled with the panic attack he must have been holding back throughout that entire confrontation with the Sector Seven chief.

Even though I knew for certain Samuel had been counting on my reaction, the reaction that ended it all, I felt guilty and hollow. It was a horrible feeling, eerily similar in nature to the one I had experienced not that much earlier, when I let Bumblebee behind because _he knew the risks_. Just like _Sam_ knew the risks when he chose to do what he did.

What did it say about myself, that I let such things happen? That I let _younglings_ …

I called my medic. _:Ratchet…:_

As I expected, he was aware of everything. _:Even if I had the necessary elements to synthesize them, applying sedatives at this juncture would be unwise. Especially with Samuel's unique physiology:_ Ratchet somberly commed back.

Thankful that the other humans were still riveted on the hologram Jazz had taken over, I walked to where those two were clustered together. When I was close enough, I once again knelt, placing myself between them and the others, shielding the human from their view completely. "Sam…" I honestly did not know what to say. Thank you for taking your own kin to task over their treatment of us? Thank you for standing against prejudice? Thank you for putting yourself into the line of fire for our sake? How could I, when half my processing told me to tell him off for doing it all at his own expense?

My spark twisted on itself. Despite that I had focused on the relief provided by the fact that Sam had applied the safety on the gun before that last stunt, my processor dwelt on it now. Sam really had _not_ been certain Simmons had a conscience when he made himself the hostage. The man could have taken the safety off and taken advantage of the situation, maybe even shot him at any time…

"I'm sorry," Sam murmured tiredly, and I realized he must have misinterpreted my half-lidded gaze and the continued presence of my battle mask. He thought I was disappointed in him rather than myself. "I know it was probably crazy, and I know you're probably mad I went too far. I can tell you think it speaks badly of you when you get angry, and I'm not proud I managed to make it happen, but… I know it's probably just me being a rebellious teenager talking, but I don't regret doing what I just did."

I vented, letting my helm drop and retracting my mask. "Sam." I met his eyes. "I am not mad-"

"You totally were," he told me, weariness in every syllable.

" _Were._ " I overlooked his interruption because I was glad to see his panic attack receding. He did not have to put active effort into breathing steadily instead of hyperventilating now. "I… simply wish it had not come to this. You are too young to have to go through this, Sam." I paused, and when he did not bristle at being called young, I went on. "And I am upset I did not insist more on you revealing your plan. I can assure you I would not have allowed you to do even half of what you did, or put yourself in such a risk."

Sam laughed silently. "This wasn't the plan, if it could even be called that. I really _was_ going to do the hostage exchange thing. But then Simmons woke up and he _acted_. He just _acted_ and I decided I had to make it _stop_ before I even bothered trying to force the deal… I guess things just went from there."

Bumblebee hummed. I was surprised when I did not understand what he was trying to convey.

I was processing what next to say when, back where the other unbound humans were gathered, Simmons cursed. "Shit." He said heavily. "Shit." I turned my helm to see him pacing around the unmoving hologram of Megatron. The image was one of the many when my former bond-brother yelled or laughed at the heavens. Simmons was clearly disturbed by the sight, and there was no mistaking the recognition in this eyes. "Shit, shit, shit! We are in such _trouble!_ "

And just like that, Sector Seven had become an ally. Temporarily or not, the organization that had hunted us and taken Bumblebee away for experimentation, and Primus knew what else, had become our _ally_.

I turned back to watch Sam, who was not in a position to see what I could see but had heard just fine. He was leaning, more steadily now, against Bumblebee. Relief and accomplishment practically _radiated_ from him. Sensing my gaze, he looked back and smiled contentedly.

I felt my previous guilt and regrets over everything I had witnessed throughout the night just… disappear.

He had _needed_ this. Needed to gain _victory_ over everything Simmons represented, both for our sakes and to prove to himself that he _could_. And he _had_.

The next 20 minutes consisted of Samuel's kin noticing his absence and reacting, as expected, by crowding him. He behaved as though he had not just had a nervous breakdown, and only Mikaela saw through the act. I noticed that she did not make good on her implied threat of killing him with knives, but it might have been only because she had none on her person. The time also allowed Simmons to go round and free his men, who then warily went to retrieve their handguns and communication devices one after another. It must have been quite an experience, seeing as Ratchet never left the immediate vicinity of the piles and kept running visually perceptible medical scans on them all just for the sake of it.

I was running scenarios through my processor for how best to go from here, with my Autobots chiming in when they could, when Simmons shouted from behind me. "Hey kid! Yeah, you the crazy one."

I looked down, where Samuel was now standing and answering questions for his parents while his mate held onto his arm and contributed with dry wit, both caustic and otherwise. "Yeah?" He showed no sort of discomfort in his reply.

Simmons looked at him for a while, then glanced between me and my other soldiers, before switching his attention back to Sam. "VIP treatment, huh?"

Sam grinned at his deliberately passive face. "And Mikaela's juvie record. Gone. Forever."

Simmons snorted and turned to walk off, lifting his reclaimed cellphone to his hear to make a call but still taking the time to put in the last word. "Kid's an extortionist."

This time around, the silence was not heavy at all.

Until Judy Witwicky spoke. "So… Juvie record huh?"

Then it was simply awkward.

For Mikaela at least. Sam was not fazed, and the unexpected but welcome joy I could feel warming my spark left no room for any discomfort anymore. Not when I had other thoughts to dwell upon. Such as that even if this all did end with my death and the insurance of my race's extinction upon the AllSpark's destruction… I could risk a hope that at least _humanity_ , who was innocent in all this, would endure through it.

All because one human youngling had brutally taken a shredder to Seymour Simmons' skepticism and arrogant flippancy.

As I beheld him now, sheepishly explaining to his parents that the whole 'hostage thing' was just a misunderstanding, I realized that perhaps it was not too late to trust a hope that this war could finally end.

Who _are_ you, boy, that you can reignite my hope so easily? That was the thought that kept going through my mind.

_:…Sir?:_ Bumblebee's tentative tone reached me through a private comm. Belatedly, I noticed that I had failed to acknowledge several data bursts sent to me through the shared connection by the others. My processor had wandered.

I was saved from replying by a tapping on my shin plates. Looking down, I saw the subject of my thoughts staring up at me. "You okay, Optimus?"

The other humans were hanging back, not nearly as brave or comfortable with us as Sam was. I suppose they feared we would kick or step on them, by accident or otherwise, if they surprised us.

"Yes." Actually no, I was not. And I had not been for a very, very long time, ever since I came upon the devastation at Tyger Pax and found Bumblebee with his throat torn apart. Even then I was not fine, as it had been hundreds of vorns before even that that Megatron severed our brother bond and left a permanent, never-to-be-healed wound behind. I would not be 'okay' even if the war finally ended one day, assuming I even survived to see it. But I felt _better_ that I did in dozens of vorns, and it was worlds apart from what I believed I could expect mere hours before, and that was enough.

Sam's eyes searched my optics for any deception, until he nodded, and again I felt that strange idea that he somehow understood.

It was absurd, I had not changed my mind on that, but I supposed even some absurd things turned out to be true once in a while.


	5. Post-Mortem Assignment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, Mikaela and Bumblebee go ahead to Hoover Dam with Sector Seven. On the way, Bumblebee enjoys flummoxing every human in sight, while Sam delights in painting Simmons in a negative (but honest and true, scout's honor!) light in front of the Defense Secretary John Keller. Oh, and Jazz shoots every LN2 tank he can spot, which is all of the tanks. All of them.
> 
> Later that night, when Sam can't sleep and spends time with Bumblebee in the hangar instead, the crazy spy-hermit shows up again and proceeds to check for what new stuff Sam can do. When certain things come to light, Sam feels like a total cheat. It's even more shocking than the revelation that the crazy old man has been plotting against - er... setting up contingencies in case S7 went bad, that's it - for several decades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've started to drop hints about who Henry is. If you can guess before I post the next chapter, I'll allow the one doing the guessing to make a case in regards to whether or not I should include Miles Lancaster in this story, in any capacity. I won't promise to do it though. :P
> 
> Also, you can be sure I won't be turning Henry into some sort of story-stealer. Sam, Optimus and Bumblebee are the key characters here. Henry (or rather who he was before) is just here to sabotage the shit out of stuff for another chapter (or two if the word count gets away from me again).

You'd think that, after that nerve-wracking and, quite frankly, _draining_ stick measuring contest I had with Simmons, I'd be able to say things and events just blurred into one another. That's what usually happens after an adrenaline rush like that, right? Either that or falling asleep from the exhaustion of it all.

They didn't blur at all. Not the deflections I was able to somehow pull out of my ass when my parents started asking me question after question. Not the looks of perplexed and, amazingly enough, not-at-all-grudging approval that Ironhide kept shooting my way. Not the speculative curiosity that Jazz somehow transmitted. I have no idea how I was even able to see those feeling for what they were. It's not like Autobots had the same range of facial expressions as us, but I intuitively knew how they were feeling at the time.

Just like I now seemed to remember everything with total, crystal clarity. And I do mean _everything_ , not just the way Bumblebee fussed over me, frantically trying and failing to curb my panic attack. I could vividly remember Ratchet's understated but oh so _vindictive_ glee at having the chance to keep those agents off their game as he scanned them, one after another, when they went to get their weapons and cellphones. Mikaela's silent agreement to wait until we were in private before she questioned me. The way she kept my arm wrapped in both of hers as I talked to my parents, keeping up the charade of her being my girlfriend with such a natural air that I wondered if maybe I could dare think it wasn't all a charade anymore.

Even through the grime and sweat that clung to all of us, she still had a scent of lilac and jasmine about her.

I could remember perfectly the time it took my mom to finally let me out of the hug she'd pulled me in after I was no longer a 'hostage' – 2 minutes and 14 seconds – and I could say, right off the top of my head, how long the hologram had been kept up after Simmons – the asshole – finally agreed to use common sense and hear the Autobots' side of the story:

17 minutes and 12 seconds.

And out of _those_ , 12 minutes and 2 seconds were all Jazz' doing, because Optimus Prime – Cybertron's honest-to-God _king_ – came over to where I was having a meltdown just so he could _kneel_ and hide me from sight until I got a grip on myself again. I wonder if he'll ever realize just how completely he blew my mind when he did that. That Bumblebee had been nearly panicking like I was ever since the holographic story started didn't even barely prepare me for that.

To be honest, I'd actually _expected_ Bumblebee to fuss over me as he did, since he'd been _assigned_ as my watcher and, for some reason I still couldn't figure out, he'd become attached to me. Become attached _before_ I became more than Sam Witwicky, high-school wimp and all around loser. I couldn't understand _why_ it had happened, but I could accept that it _had_.

But when that huge leader of an alien race came over, _knelt_ in front of me (I was still floored by how readily he seemed to do it in front of puny, fragile organics like us) and called my name in that… that aching tone I'd never heard before. For that one second, there had been _nothing_ majestic or out of reach in that deep, rumbling, rich, coolest voice _ever_. I hated it, and I _hated_ that I was the cause of it. It made sure the first thing I blurted out was an apology, even though I didn't regret what I'd just done.

I almost _did_ regret what I'd done. God, he'd been the only person there that didn't twitch when I pulled my gun on Simmons. He'd believed every step of the way that I wouldn't turn homicidal on him, believed in _me_ despite so much reason not to, but I _didn't_ regret it. Not after it worked and got them a free pass to the AllSpark. And I couldn't just lie to his face about it, even if I did end up sounding like a stubborn teen.

So I only apologized for making him mad, and he said he was upset with _himself_ , not me.

Well, let's just say that I was glad my panic attack had left me drained, because otherwise I might have fallen into hysterics like Jazz had done earlier at the absurdity of it all. In the end, I laughed only a bit and babbled something about Simmons and acting, all the while forcing aside what was really on my mind before I really lost it again.

By the time the Sector Seven forces were able to get underway again, the Autobots had conferred privately over their comms and decided they would escort us all to the helipad where the Secretary of Defense was waiting for us (Who knew?). As Mikaela and I were riding in Bumblebee, following the once again moving Sector Seven vans, my parents were in Ironhide's cab. During the trip, after I managed to persuade Mikaela that I'd only bluffed to Simmons about acting dumb all my life, I had time to wonder if Optimus realized he was giving all our human saints a bad name.

Here was a giant alien robot that could have felt entitled to any and all feelings of superiority, that could have shot down he Sector 7 Forces or done God knows how many things, and he was the closest thing to a saint I had ever met. He defended us and our right to live with everything he had, and like any other saint he kept constantly putting himself down whenever anyone other than him suffered on his watch, even if it was by their own brashness.

Once at the site, I had quite a bit of fun seeing the reactions of the people there, especially those in the helicopter, when Bumblebee transformed into his bipedal mode right after we climbed out of the car.

When the others did the same, I didn't even bother hiding my grin at the humans' completely poleaxed expressions. I keep grinning all through the pleasantries that Secretary Keller and Optimus exchanged too. Well, Optimus offered pleasantries and Keller stuttered replies. Eventually, the Autobot leader took pity on my fellow humans and led his three officers away "for the sake of expediency" before anyone actually fainted like that Glen guy had as soon as Bumblebee transformed.

And the looks on the faces of the Sector Seven goons that weren't part of the convoy were _hilarious_ when Bumblebee climbed onto the trailer platform and transformed back into car mode, so he could be flown along with us. I'd have protested the idea, if Jazz hadn't made sure to shoot holes into every liquid nitrogen tank he could find before they all left. It put the humans on alert, but it also gave me the perfect chance to steamroll past Simmons before he could try and bullshit the SecDef.

I explain to Keller that "You see, sir, they don't want to risk one of their own being impaled, frozen alive, bound in chains, and taken for experimentation again, as it basically happened earlier after he exposed himself to save us from a gruesome death at Sector Seven hands. By the way, the US government isn't in the business of having people abducted in the middle of the night without any sort of charge right? Do-anything-and-get-away-with-it-badges aren't actually _real_ , right?"

My mom had had some choice words to say about that, and she took advantage of Keller's open—mouthed, baffled outrage fully. Simmons had to usher her and my dad to a different helicopter get her to stop airing all the stuff he did to us.

I'm pretty sure I ruined _all_ of Simmons' plans by doing that, since it made the SecDef glower at him mistrustfully and ask me questions about what had happened over the past couple of days. I'm pretty sure Simmons was going to spin the Autobot situation in a way that would make it look as if Sector Seven (and, thus, himself) had the "NBE situation" well in hand and could be trusted to handle the hostile ones that had been causing death and destruction. The 'Cons, I guessed, were responsible for that unexplained mass mobilization of the army that the news had reported the other day.

As if! I wasn't about to let _anyone_ exploit the Autobots, thank you very much! So I made sure to _not_ babble but still say as much as possible before the choppers took off and made it impossible for us to talk to each other without yelling our lungs out.

That had been 14 hours ago.

So now here I was, leaning against the hood of Bumblebee's alt form. Partly because I didn't want to leave him alone in case S7 tried anything, and partly because I couldn't sleep. We were in the Hoover Dam hangar closest to the section holding the peripheral living quarters, and I could quite honestly say I had lived through the fullest day of my life. I'd met a group of soldiers that happened to be the only survivors of a Decepticon attack on the Soccent military base in Quatar. I had been shown Magatroncicle. I had been shown the AllSpark (dear _God_ , that Cube was enormous!). I had been interrogated by Keller in front of everyone there, extensively, and by the end of it he looked almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Captain Lennox had looked decidedly weirded out.

I couldn't blame him. I _was_ just a 17-year-old that apparently had ties to an alien race and information on which the fate of the entire world rested.

That wasn't what was bothering me though. What I kept getting back to was that, not long ago, I had lived through the creation of _life_ only to see it snuffed out right in front of me.

The Nokia-bot had never stood a chance. I honestly hoped it hadn't been what I think it was. I knew Frenzy hadn't been anything even close to the equivalent of a Cybertronian kid, but that Nokia bot had literally been alive for only a minute or so before it was destroyed. Granted, the way it immediately produced guns from somewhere and tried to shoot the closest person didn't really support the idea of a newborn, but who knew? Maybe Autobots and Decepticons were born that way? Not like that little gun had much chance of harming adult robots after all…

I was glad Mikaela wasn't there to see me wonder about it. I wasn't supposed to be there either actually, since we'd all been shown to some living quarters not long after Tom Banacheck's ever so wonderful (and patently incriminating) tour of the place. I stayed by Mikaela's bunk until she fell asleep, but after I went to my own room I couldn't do the same. I was _tired_ , sort of, but not _sleepy_ for some reason. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd been locked in, but I guess Simmons wouldn't dare do anything like that after the SecDef chewed him out for keeping all this a secret. And the Rangers didn't look all that happy either, and they were stationed in the same corridor.

Well, technically. I was pretty sure they'd given up on sleep a while ago too.

Optimus and the other Autobots were due to arrive the next morning, and the SecDef had probably been on the phone with the president the whole day. The plan was to coordinate and figure out what to do once the Prime and his men arrived (assuming we were lucky enough to not be found by the Decepticons before then). Bumblebee (who, at my insistence, had been present for the whole tour and had hissed at Megatron's frozen form) had looked like he was itching to just go to the cube and take it away, or do something, but I don't know what he thought he could do to that humongous thing. But Simmons managed to say they shouldn't rush things for now, since Sector Seven had been studying it for a long time and it would be dangerous to move it, because it produced random energy surges when it impacted anything.

I'm pretty sure Keller only agreed to get him off his back until he straightened his own thoughts out, got rid of his headache, talked to the president and figured out what to do. On that note, I was pleasantly surprised that blonde woman, Maggie Madsen, was actually in _favor_ of letting the Autobots take the cube away, however they planned to do it…

I was, of course, completely in favor of that. It's not like the AllSpark staying in human hands had done all that much good. Even all the latest technology had been reverse-engineered from Megatron, not the Cube. It had nothing to do with the artefact. And anything had to be better than bringing things to life just so they could be killed.

"You are troubled."

All of a sudden, I realized that Bumblebee had stopped playing music quite some time ago. The engine vibrated faintly under the hood, and when I looked up from where I was staring at a crack in the concrete floor I understood why. "Oh. It's you." I heard the engine rev a bit, but Bumblebee didn't otherwise express his surprise at my recognition. "Did your intuition tell you that?"

My sarcasm didn't seem to affect Henry at all. "Nope. I guessed it from what you were doing."

"And what was I doing?" I wondered if he realized just what the car really was. Probably. He'd been there when 'Bee transformed and saved us after all.

"Brooding." He was being way too casual about this. "It doesn't suit you, lad." Lad? What had happened to _kid_? "You're too young for it." I couldn't help but glower. "That doesn't suit you either."

"Tough."

Henry (last name Matthews apparently) turned serious. "Before you unfairly take out on me whatever frustration you gathered up today, can I at least know _why_ you look like you're about to bite my head off?"

I pushed away from the car, standing straight. "You sure you don't already know?" I stuffed my hands in the pockets of the military fatigues we'd been provided. "You seemed to be doing fine in that area last night."

" _I'm_ not the all-knowing one, lad."

I took my time to look at him. He still wore a suit, but without the upper piece. He had a white shirt on, (I still had my black jacket over a white polo shirt) and he also had a tie, with a black, calf-length trench coat over everything, open at the front. He pulled badass formal in a way I couldn't help but envy, though I didn't show it. "I'd ask how much you knew about all this, but I'm pretty certain the answer to that is 'everything' right?"

The self-proclaimed spy hermit raised an eyebrow. "That's a loaded question. Everything can mean a lot of things."

"Will you just stop it?" I snapped at him. Distantly, I wondered if I was really as immune to the astral plane as he said I was if I could still get so riled up. "You know what I mean!"

"I do, and I told you before why I'm so deliberately obtuse sometimes."

I sighed. Really, out of everybody I'd met over the past few days, Henry was probably the last person I should be angry at. "How could you just do _nothing_ about those experiments?" I was surprised at how strained by voice had gotten. Did it really bother me that much? "They just… they brought it to life just so they could subject it to more and more radiation. To see how much it could take before…" I gestured helplessly as Bumblebee's engine revved in concern behind me.

The agent walked to me – he'd been keeping a good distance until that point – and Bumblebee took that as his cue to transform and loom behind me threateningly. I couldn't help but grin, and wondered just how Bumblebee would take it if I told him I found it more endearing than scary.

Henry just approached all the way until he was a couple of paces in front of me, though he did keep his eyes on the Bot all the while. "You must be the adorable one of the bunch, aren't you?"

Bumblebee's broken vocalizer beeped in bafflement, and I couldn't quite smother a laugh at seeing his scary bodyguard act so easily blown off.

Henry returned his gaze to me. "The Nokia bot wasn't really alive. Or at least not really sentient. Intelligent, yes, but nothing more than a particularly sophisticated AI. A murderous drone."

I _wanted_ to believe it but. "How can you be sure? You weren't there. Or did you witness past experiments and poof! You just decided it was true and left it at that." My tone wasn't _totally_ non-hostile.

Those black eyes narrowed. "Walk with me." Without even waiting for my assent or refusal, he turned and strode off. After a moment, I rushed to catch up, and Bumblebee was hot on our tail

"Tell me something," Henry did not seem to care a giant robot was stalking us. "You came into contact with _Them_ earlier, did you not?"

I threw a glance behind me, where Bee was clearly confused by our conversation. "I thought you said I was supposed to keep everything a secret until tomorrow."

"You, yes, and you'll do it," the man said, oddly certain I'd do as I said despite that no binding promise had been made. "Not _me_ though. So, I'll ask again. You came into contact with _Them_ , yes?"

"… Yes." I looked away. I wistfully wondered if I'd ever experience that again.

"So, do you accept that they're all-seeing?"

Ignoring the growing confusion in the voice box of the robot following us, I peered at Henry, wondering why he didn't say all _-knowing_. "I guess so."

"Well!" Henry turned on his heel and faced me, coming to a stop right at the mouth of the tunnel leading towards the main section of Hoover Dam. "Why, then, do you think they would bother having an incarnated agent infiltrate the ranks of an organization like Sector Seven? Regardless of the fact that the one life I still remember, the one right before this one, had a lot to do with them? Why would they send someone in if they already know everything about it? What would be the point?"

That… that was actually a good question. "Erm…" Intuition? Maybe a little help? "So you could sabotage it?" No help at all. Damn.

Henry snorted in amusement. "Not hardly." He resumed his trek, and so did I. An increasingly flabbergasted Bumblebee followed us as we entered the well-lit tunnel. "That was just part of the way I chose to interpret the parameters of my mission for this life." He met my eyes. "Which was to make sure Sector Seven didn't do more harm than good."

A wave of relief washed over me. Somehow I knew I could, at least, believe _him_. "So those little bots-"

"Were just drones." Henry nodded. "Sparkless. _Soulless_." He made sure to hold my gaze again. "I can assure you that if the people here really _were_ about to decide to create babies just to experiment them to death, I'd have brought this entire dam crashing down decades ago."

I blinked at that brazen claim, then threw a worried glance at the cameras dotting the roof of the tunnel.

Henry laughed. "Come now, lad, do you really think I came to you _without_ first feeding a looping slice of film to the security network keeping watch over this area of the dam?" I gaped while Bumblebee clicked his voice box. Seriously, how else was I supposed to react? "Or did you think I came here on orders? As a chaperone maybe? A guide meant to take you on a more thorough tour of this base? It is past midnight."

It did sound kind of silly when he put it like that I guess, but… "Why not?" I still challenged. "Simmons did say he'd give us VIP treatment."

Henry tossed Bumblebee a backwards glance, before looking at me again, though his fast stride did not waver. "Because you _clearly_ expect him to live up to his word." He knew, of course, why I decided to stick with Bumblebee. That it wasn't just boredom and lack of sleep on my part. "Don't judge Seymour too harshly though." I blinked, surprised. "There's more to him than obfuscating stupidity. And he's been doing better than his grandfather. Walter Simmons created this organization from an obsession. Other than his unhealthy fascination with the cube, he had a total hatred of all things robotic and alien. It took the death of his son – who he'd _forced_ into service with S7 – and two of his friends being saved by a Decepticon – from the same explosion that lost him his son – to realize that he was looking at all these robotic life forms through the same, unfair lens."

I mouthed silently at that all too unexpected revelation for a few minutes. That… wasn't there some sort of secrecy protocol supposed to be involved? Wasn't this classified information? "So what? You're saying that just because he didn't actually _give_ any orders to harm us, he should be trusted? Me and Mikaela almost died anyway! He was going to torture and experiment on Bumblebee! Not to mention everything else!"

The hermit spy gave me a surprisingly dry look. "And I'm sure _you_ immediately assumed the best of your car when it started acting strange."

I flushed and looked pointedly forward. My now crystal-clear memory rolled back to the day before yesterday, when I called Miles on the phone to tell him Satan's Camaro was stalking me.

Yeah. _So_ not helping.

"I'm not advising you to trust him. _I_ wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. I'm just trying to cut the momentum from under your resentment before it gets too bad."

"Gee, thanks!" I deadpanned, but inside I actually was a bit thankful, even if I didn't quite understand why.

A sizzling crackle pulled my attention to the back. "S-zzt Ssaam-" Bumblebee winced and shook his helm, then reverted to the radio. " _What's all this, then?"_ An old man's voice asked. _"I don't get it!"_ And that was a kid.

I felt a bit bad about it, but while I hadn't _promised_ anything, I'd still kind of given my word, so until tomorrow we'd have to live with whatever Henry decided to just blurt out in front of the yellow Camaro. "Sorry, 'Bee. I really can't say until tomorrow night. Besides, it's not important to your mission. I mean, you've pretty much completed it right? You scouted Earth and found the AllSpark. Now you just need to rendezvous with your commanding officer, which will happen in a few hours."

The yellow car-bot seemed to slump in disappointment, and I almost caved at that pleading pair of optics and the warble of the vocalizer. "That's unfair, 'Bee. Now you're making me feel bad."

The radio came to life again. _"Yeah? – Well you_ ** _should_** _be sorry!"_ Bee _pouted._ Somehow. Even without much of a mouth plate. He crossed his arms too, looking away from me as he kept walking along with us.

I sighed. "I'll make it up to you after we reach…" I stopped talking and turned to Henry and asked. "Where _are_ we going?"

"This tunnel leads from the entrance hangar directly to the rec room." Simmons had insisted that Bumblebee not come anywhere deeper into the dam if at all possible. I assumed we were assigned _that_ particular wing of living quarters due to the same logic. Clearly, Henry didn't give a rat's ass. "A fortunate coincidence that the architects designed the place that way." He looked at the bot that was now walking _alongside_ us, across me from him. "You'll be glad to know that lots of things were brought to the place over time, and the need to allow tow vehicles in and out made sure the room had a large, hangar-like entrance of its own."

Bumblebee gave the agent a long, measuring look, then pinned me with his optics. _"I still say – None of'em can be trusted._ " He moved closer as we walked, but looked ahead of us, glaring up at the cameras.

Well, I was pretty sure Henry could be trusted. Besides, he'd deliberately led us through the vehicle access tunnel Bee fit in, instead of, say, inviting me to follow through the adjacent, human-sized corridors I was sure existed. Speaking of which. "How much farther now?"

"Oh, about 10 minutes of quick walking!" The man, much to my consternation, said all too glibly. He did toss Bee a speculative look though. "Unless your friend has a better idea? Though I can't imagine he'd want anyone from Sector Seven inside his cabin."

Be stopped, prompting us to do the same. He stared (glared really) at the crazy hermit. I could almost _feel_ him weighing the risk of letting Henry ride inside him against the certainty of me getting a foot ache by the end of this walk. _"No touchy!_ " He raised a servo and wiggled his digit as if telling 'no' to a kid asking for candy. _"You touch, you die."_

Henry nodded all too seriously for someone who was being threatened with death by a 17-foot-tall mech. I wasn't even sure Bee was completely joking either. "Then I assume you have a device that can generate an insulating field around my body."

Utterly baffled again, Bumblebee stared at me in helpless confusion. I sighed. "Well you did say he shouldn't touch anything. Presumably, you have a way to enable that _and_ drive him there."

The bot slumped in exasperation at having his joke turned on him and transformed without another radio blip. Both doors popped open in invitation. _"Nothin' to see here, Move along!"_

I got into the driver's seat and the seatbelt settled over me on its own, not too tight and not too loose. Henry smiled indulgently at me, then the headboard before fastening his himself. Bee barely gave him a second after he was done before tires screeched against the asphalt and we took off at a speed no one would consider healthy or safe.

"So," Henry asked me after a short while, not at all stiff from speed fear in his seat, unlike me. "I take it you haven't felt the need to sleep since last night?"

For a moment, I forgot to be worried about how fast we were going. "… I guess?"

He nodded. "I suspected this might happen, which is why I checked the cameras. The agent in the monitor room fell into a light nap, poor thing."

Which probably meant he'd used that gas, or something similar (maybe odorless?) to do his camera hijacking thing. "How on Earth has your duplicity not been discovered yet?"

"What duplicity?" Henry asked all too seriously. "I work for no man or organization other than Sector Seven."

Well, Gods, Angels, Saints or Ascended Being, whatever they were called, weren't _men_ or organizations at all, so I supposed he really wasn't lying. "So what about sleeping?"

"A necessary downtime for those subsisting on inefficient fuel." He looked at me. "Technically, or ideally, we should be able to subsist on the energy around and 'above' us, instead of having to decompose physical substances. The Astral plane and the murkiness of earth-grown nutrients makes it hard though, hence the need for food, and for time when we use less energy and fuel than we replenish, ergo sleep."

"Huh." Imagine that. "So I don't need to sleep anymore."

"I imagine the frequency of you needing sleep will decrease greatly, perhaps disappear completely eventually if you avoid certain substances and learn meditation and its true purpose." Henry shifted in his seat. I noticed that his seatbelt was a bit looser now. Had Bee pulled it uncomfortably tight just to make a point? "It all depends on you and how you chose to move from here."

Sleepless nights sounded boring. Then again, this was like the healthy version of insomnia, and if I really had perfect memory as I suspected I guessed I could figure out stuff to do in the night. "I don't suppose you have any ideas or reading materials on that?"

"Later," Henry gestured with a hand. "We're here."

Bumblebee didn't even try to be discreet as he just drove through the large, surprisingly open, entrance to the rec-room. He did come to a stop though, but while Henry got out quickly enough, Bee refused to let my seatbelt unfasten. He even closed his doors to keep me in. "What's wrong, 'Bee?"

There was some silence, then. "… _I'm worried – He's a strange one – What was that about?"_

Sam ducked his head and sighed. "I _can't_ tell you… well I can, but to be honest I feel I should do as he asks and keep quiet for now. And I think there are still things he wants to tell me." The seatbelt didn't come off. "Look, you must've figured out he's the one that got us free, right?" A hesitant burst of static confirmed it. "Let's just see what he wants, alright? So far, he's helped us. And if you find things too boring, you can link to Optimus and report on all this, yeah?" I was pretty sure he'd already composed a report, if not already sent it out, no matter my feelings on the matter. Optimus _was_ his commanding officer, and I honestly believed the big bot fully deserved the loyalty of his followers, but I had a feeling me saying I didn't mind would make a difference. Relieved Bumblebee of any guilt he might feel at infringing my privacy.

I got my confirmation when the seatbelt unbuckled and the door opened. "Thanks for understanding, Bumblebee. I'll try not to worry you in the future."

A pleased beep was my answer to that one.

When I came out of the car, I looked around the place. The rec room was huge, about the size of a gym really. Actually, it looked like a cross between a gym and a rec room, with a bar and a few tables on one side, and areas for various games taking up most of the space. There was a bowling alley, some pool tables, even a basketball field. "This can't be the only rec room." It would get way too loud for some people if all those facilities were used at once. At least there was a large TV there, up on the wall above the bar.

Damn, Hoover Dam was huge.

"There are a few others, but access is restricted to the higher ups," Henry confirmed.

The Rec Room was not as empty as I expected or hoped. William Lennox and some of his rangers were there as well, including his second in command Robert Epps. They didn't come over though. They stayed where they were, although they did give the two of us curious looks, then amazed and wary ones when Bumblebee transformed. Even though they'd all seen it before.

Henry ignored them all as he led the way to the far side of the Rec Hall (rec room seemed too small a term). There was something like a track… or just a long strip of bare space. There was also a row of lockers next to the wall.

"Why are we here?" I predictably asked. "Because I doubt it's to play around."

"Actually, that's part of it." Henry busied himself with the locker right at the edge of the row. It opened to reveal… Horse shoes? What? "What."

Bumblebee chimed in confusion behind me. He even walked forward, past me, to peer suspiciously at the two horseshoes Henry took with him. Wait, was he scanning them for explosives? Talk about paranoia.

Looking to my left, I realized there _was_ a stake some distance away from us. "You gotta be kidding," I told the man. "You brought us here to play _horseshoes?"_

"Unbelievable, isn't it?" The agent quipped. "But I suppose the answer is yes."

I stared at him. What else could I have done really? "You have issues." Well, maybe that was a bit harsh. "You _are_ joking right?"

"Not in the least."

I actually _had_ played horseshoes in the past, but I always sucked at it, mostly because I could never get into the game enough to _care_ about even trying to aim the things properly. "I played before and didn't like it."

Henry grinned smugly and held the horseshoe in his right hand up. "Not like this you haven't." A flick of the wrist and-

I stared, stunned and awed by how the thing _spun_ on his index fingertip like a freaking _basketball._

It kept spinning for about ten seconds before the crazy man suddenly jerked his hand up, grabbed it by the middle _perfectly_ and tossed it aside, without even looking where he was throwing it.

The horseshoe hit the very top of the stake and took three full seconds to spin all the way to the floor.

And about twenty seconds after _that_ , I realized I was gaping, mouthing silently because I just had no words.

That should _not_ have been possible!

Looking as pleased with himself as after he scryed Ironhide's endearing (-ly hilarious) planetfall, Henry reached out and pushed the other horseshoe in my left hand. "Now, you give it a go."

Almost sputtering, I looked from the horseshoe to him and back a few times. Risking a glance up to my right, I was gratified to at least see _some_ astonishment on Bumblebee's face plates. Although it might have just been for my benefit. "Right. So we came all the way here just so I can suffer something humbling I suppose?"

Henry seemed honestly surprised. "Eh?"

"You know, to be shown I'm not the best thing since sliced bread? To ensure I don't become arrogant? Isn't that what old people do to us youngsters? Especially after some astonishing revelation about ourselves?"

The hermit agent blinked. "Maybe some other time." Then something passed over his face. "Though probably not." He shook his head and gestured towards the stake. Or pole. Whatever. "Just try it. Once. That's all I'm asking."

With a sigh that must have been more dramatic than warranted, I turned to look at the pole. Or _tried_ , but Henry reached out to stop me. "Not like that. The way I did it. Do that."

"… You're crazy. _No_ one can do that!" This time, _he_ aimed deadpan stare at _me_. "No one can do that just by seeing it once!" I amended.

Not saying anything, Henry crossed his arms and _gazed_ patiently at me.

Sighing again, I looked skywards and lifted the hand holding the horseshoe. I flicked the object between my fingers, twisting my wrist abruptly, and waited for the noise of metal rattling against the wooden floor, but when it didn't come I looked at my hand.

Holy _shit_!

I don't know _how_ I didn't jerk in fright and throw it off, but somehow I didn't. There it was, the horseshoe, spinning like a twister on my fingertip, and kept doing it for 6 seconds, 7, 8, 9, 10-

I snatched the horseshoe between my fingers and lashed out, tossing it to the side without even looking.

The horseshoe hit the very top of the stake and took three full seconds to spin all the way to the floor.

And about twenty seconds after _that_ , I realized I was gaping, mouthing silently because, once more within the span of just three minutes, I had absolutely no words.

After getting over my shock, I looked around warily, then with resignation when I saw Lennox and the others staring at me in barely disguised amazement.

"And _that_ ," Henry said, sounding distinctly pleased with himself. "Is called adoptive muscle memory!" I still had my jaw hanging when I looked at him again, but he was focused on the stake now. "And to think it took me two days of practice to get that trick down." He rubbed his chin, completely ignoring us, even Bumblebee who was clicking and gesturing, pointing between me and him with his digit. His helm kept turning as if watching a tennis match. "Although adoptive muscle memory is a pretty silly choice of words, since muscle memory isn't really _muscle_ memory. It's still stored in the brain, or rather the mental plane for you."

With sheer force of will, I clamped my mouth shut and lifted my hand in front of my face to stare at it in shock some more.

And the crazy hermit spy chose that, of all times, to drop the rest of the bomb. "And you did it with the left hand instead of the right like me! Your mind can perfectly replicate and adjust for mirrored movements! Your integration and balance between the mental and physical bodies is even more advanced than mine!"

"…"

Holy _shit_.

Dear _God_ , what a _hack_!


	6. Baptism by Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam learns a few things while they wait for the Autobots to arrive. Unfortunately, the Decepticons get there first.
> 
> Fortunately, there's a wild card involved that no one counted on.

My back made a thud against the thick mat, but I didn't hear it over the sound of my undignified gasp. This had to be the fourth time in a row that I got thrown off my feet. Why was I doing this again?

The neon light on the ceiling above provided no answer, but I got one anyway. After all, I had perfect memory now: after the event than I'm pretty sure will henceforth be known as "The Horseshoe Epiphany," (Robert Epps thought he was funny, the ass), Henry left to "deal with something" and left me in the "care" of Will Lennox and his Rangers. And he made sure not to disappear without throwing an off-hand remark about how I'd probably learn to fight really fast if I got to observe and _experience_ combat in a controlled environment.

The Rangers clearly didn't know what to think of Henry, and I half-expected them to refuse, to say they don't have time, or that they didn't come here to babysit a kid. But Lennox gave me that strange, calculating look of before, and there was something else in it too, but I don't know _what_. Then he asked me, completely seriously, if I'd try to see if I could get the hang of things if they provided some demonstrations.

I remember being honestly surprised. "Wait, you mean you'll do it? Just like that?" I blame Simmons for making me believe the worst of people.

"Well, the night has to pass somehow," Lennox said, completely unperturbed by the yellow mech standing behind me and scrutinizing him. "We're not keen on sleeping anyway, may as well do something with the time. Besides, you're an asset, and if his behavior is any indication," the soldier nodded in Bumblebee's direction "a really important one. So any opportunity to increase your chances of not dying is good." He stretched and cracked his neck, rising from the chair he'd been nursing a beer from. He smirked. "Just don't let it get to your head."

"I'm _sure_ you'll be quick to pop my ego if that happens," I said dryly.

The first half an hour wasn't so bad. I got to see Lennox and his men, but especially Epps, spar in turns against one another. They used military hand-to-hand with Judo mixed in, although Epps also seemed to know some sort of street fighting.

Then they demonstrated the moves more slowly, and had me replicate them. I got them all on the first try, much to their (and my) collective amazement. And much to their envy too, which they had no trouble expressing, probably because there was no spite or malice in it. These guys really were something else.

Sparring, however, was a different story. I held my own well enough when they went easy, but afterwards I kept getting my ass kicked. Well, not exactly, I _did_ manage to hold my own against Epps, more or less. For a minute or so anyway. But while I _did_ have a physical constitution on par with the best of them, I was still pretty slim and short – I still had a growth spurt to go through, hopefully – and there were two things I didn't seem to just gain from the onset: reflexes and battle instincts.

So yeah, I'd just gotten thrown off my feet again.

As I lay there, catching my breath, I couldn't get it out of my head that this was all Henry's fault.

After I lifted myself from the ground, we started again, with kicks, punches, attempted grabs, the works. Eventually I managed to pull something off. I side-kicked. It was a feint, but it worked. It let me go in close and grapple with Will, so now I just had to twist my hips, bend forward and _pull_ –

The throw worked, and Lennox flew over my shoulder, but instead of him landing on his back he managed to twist too, in mid-air, landing on his feet and reversing my grip, basically doing to me what I'd just tried to do to him.

I gasped, falling on my back for the fifth time.

Bloody scrapping hell.

Lennox was standing over me, eyes narrowed. "Kid, what did I tell you?"

I sighed and climbed to my feet. "Don't try to think too much about how to move, just let it happen naturally?"

"That's right."

"Yeah, well, I'm trying!" I snapped. Maybe it was childish to react that way, but I was becoming frustrated.

"I can see _that_."

I stopped before I could start ranting and took a good look at him. The guy was being serious.

Lennox kept looking at me and frowning, then he asked me, completely out of the blue. "What's the square root of 67 multiplied by four divided by 29?"

I blinked, completely thrown off by the non sequitur. I exchanged a glance with Epps, who looked just as baffled as me. Looking to my right, I saw Bumblebee gazing curiously at us. He shrugged, doorwings twitching slightly. Seeing that I wasn't going to get any help, I turned to behold the captain again. "Erm… square root of just 67 or of the whole thing?"

"The whole thing. Actually, forget it. Give me the square root of this: 78 multiplied by four divided by 66."

"4.48447999." I didn't even take a second. "Assuming I only take into account the first four decimals of the result of the division."

"…. Damn." I should have known Epps would drawl that. Really.

Will looked at Bumblebee. "Is that right?"

Bumblebee blinked (er, shuttered his optics?) and nodded. _"We have a winner!"_ The radio cheered.

"Hmm," Lennox scratched his cheek. "Okay. Let's try this a different way." He turned around and led the way to the middle of the area laid down with soft mats. "Feel free to think about what to do as much as you want." He turned to face me properly and got ready, fists up in a standard boxing stance. "Actually, think as much as possible. Ready?"

I hesitantly loosened some knots in my back and mirrored his pose. "Well, I guess we'll know when we start."

"Okay. Here we go. Think fast!"

"What th-!" I barely dodged a right hook, then leaned out of the way of a left punch and brought my arm down to block a kick to my side. Will pulled it back but kicked again without even catching his footing, almost hitting me in the face. I blocked again, guard stiff but firm.

Will drew back, spun on his heel and sent a spin kick straight at my chest, quick as a snake-

The world slowed down, and I _thought_. Observed. Studied. _Analyzed_. All the observations I'd done of their spars, and all the fights I was ever involved in, all of them came together and I _processed_ it all in less than an instant. My eyes took in my surroundings, my ears, smell and touch making up for the rest. The consistency of the mat was gauged: worn but serviceable, impact on balance minimal. The speed of will's leg, calculated. The distance to the walls, measured. The time the foot would contact my chest: 0.06 seconds. Variables scrolled through my head, assumptions were made and discarded.

I leaned back and to the left, right hand strafing up, and caught the foot, fingers aimed _inwards_ and _twisted._

Will's eyes widened, but he rolled with the move, jumping, spinning horizontally in the air. He landed on his arms and managed to send a kick to my head as he cartwheeled. _Capoiera_ I recognized. That Fig guy they'd been talking about must have taught him. I ducked, blocked an oncoming punch, then another, then struck a front kick aside. All the while I noted the increase in the rate of hits. Soon enough he'd stop holding back and-

I had to cross my forearms to stop a punch to my sternum. Then came another – left cheek, blocked – kidney –averted – Will reached forward, grabbing my wrist and spinning to press his back against me, one arm reaching back over my shoulder, grabbing the back of my shirt, the other hand on my arm -

Suddenly, I was airborne.

Then I was facing upwards, air rushing by my ears. I knew the ground was approaching from behind and below, and my brain instantly calculated the speed, sending signals to my limbs as needed.

I didn't gasp this time, because my back never hit the mat. Looking up, I was gratified to see Lennox's astonishment at how I stopped my fall with my feet, legs bent at a right angle the knees. But I didn't give him time to do more than that. I'd already estimated how much strength I'd need to put in my kick, how to turn my spine, how to _pull_ on his oh-so-helpful hold on my forearm, how tight to hold onto Will's own when he inevitably tried to drop me – there!

I was in the air, and this time it was all me. I'd never done even the slightest cartwheel before, but now I did a spinning side-flip like I'd done it all my life, almost flying over Lennox and pulling his arm along. I landed gingerly, Will's arm twisted overhead as I went, and now _I_ was behind him, and all I had to do was pull on his arm hard enough to make him arch his back, then reach back and _throw_ him up with my only free hand against the small of his back.

For the first time in that entire night, the gasp that came was not mine. Will Lennox met the mat face-first after being flipped backwards head over heels. Air came out of his lungs in a sudden, painful gust.

Well, almost.

"… Holy mother of god." Epps breathed from the side.

Dramatic much?

I let go and scrambled away from the downed soldier. I was pretty sure he still hadn't been putting everything he had into it, so if he decided to up the ante I wanted it to be on my terms, not his. I _didn't_ think he'd try and cheap shots, but better safe than sorry.

Will groaned and slowly began to climb to his feet, wincing as he moved his shoulder. Daring to look around, I took in the varying reactions of my audience, ranging from understated astonishment to perplexed stupefaction. Bumblebee gave me a thumbs up in the background, _We Are the Champions_ playing at a volume low enough to add to the mood without snapping everyone else out of their various states.

Once again standing, Lennox looked around and nodded at the less-than-aware states of his men as though he both expected and approved of the situation. "Right. Snap out of it!" He snapped his fingers a few time, prompting his men to blink and regain their wits. "Go on, back to the table with you. Get." With a last glance in my direction, they all left. Then Lennox faced me again and smirked. "Improvising?"

I laughed nervously. "Ah ha ha... Whatever works?"

The captain of the rangers nodded grimly. "Good." He turned around and headed back to the table he'd been sitting in when I first came in with Bumblebee. But he did look back to say one last thing. "You've got a good head, kid. Don't lose it."

"What he said."

"Gaaah!" I jumped a foot in the air, and I thanked the stars for my now perfect sense of balance because without it I doubt I'd have managed to avoid falling on my ass. I ignored the snickers of the soldiers. They must have thought I wouldn't hear, but I did. My hearing had gotten better, like everything else about me. Whirling around, I glared at the all too innocent looking man that had somehow snuck up behind me. "Don't _do_ that!"

"What? Don't speak?"

I opened my mouth to tell Henry exactly how I felt about that reply, but Bumblebee beat me to it. _"Don't speak. I know what you're thinking, I don't need your reasons, Don't tell me 'cause it hurts…"_

I turned my glare on the yellow mech. "Not. Helping!"

'Bee ducked his head bashfully, but I had the sneaking suspicion he was still laughing at me. The way his doorwings quivered made me think he was tittering, but I couldn't know for sure, and I had a feeling 'Bee knew that too.

Damn cultural barrier.

All of a sudden, I got the strong urge to enunciate something snippy in his own language. That would shut him up nicely. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that I didn't know where to even begin to make those electronic noises and rumbles with my human vocal cords. A shame, too, since Ironhide had provided me with such a _wonderful_ set of swearwords and curses.

Wryly, I noted that it figured it would happen that way. That my first exposure to an alien language, the exposure which also happened to reveal to me that I actually _understood_ it, would consist of what was probably the most refined instance of cussing in the language's history.

Thirteen multi-phrase curses hurled at Jazz. All of them transmitted in a single, nine-second burst.

Releasing an exasperated but also resigned breath of air, I faced Henry again. "Back from whatever errand you were on?"

The crazy hermit made for one of the free tables and I decided I may as well walk with him. Bumblebee followed us, naturally. "I would have been back faster, but I got a message from one of my colleagues that Tom wasn't being himself."

"Tom?" Tom who… oh. "Tom Banachek?" Why did I not like the sound of that?

Henry kept his eyes forward. "Simmons may be in charge of apprehending so-called 'NBEs' and such, and the head Sector Seven's field agents as a whole, but Banachek is the one actually _leading_ this organization. He also happens to, as you might say, _not_ be an asshole." He eyed me askance, and when I didn't snort or anything, he continued. "And he's just learned that the robot he's been conducting live dissection and experiments on is not, in fact, just a mindless space exploration drone. Even without knowing it was an evil doombringer, it would be bad enough on its own, but it also made him rethink what the other experiments might have been about."

I blinked, and my blood chilled as the realization steadily descended over me. "Oh hell…"

Henry nodded. "Yes. Recall your own reaction to seeing those experiments. Now imagine that you've suddenly been given a pretty good reason to think those really were cybernetic babies. Imagine that you've been there for the many dozens of experiments/executions/deaths-by-torture that were conducted in the past. And imagine knowing that _you're_ the one that ordered each and every one of them for the past three decades."

I said nothing. Not just because I had no idea _what_ , but because my throat had closed up.

We reached the table, and Henry put his briefcase on it. "He's in the observation deck, just staring at Megatron." He unfastened the two clasps, but didn't open it yet. "I'm one of the oldest operatives here, so he and I go way back really. I tried to assure him that he hadn't been murdering newborns, but he didn't really believe me." Opening the case, he revealed a laptop. "After all, I can't know things for certain, since I have no more facts available than him. He pointed out that Sector Seven had also been absolutely sure the robot wasn't really sentient, but we were oh so wrong about that, so who's to say we aren't wrong about everything else?"

I stared at him, forgetting all about the laptop and accessories he was laying out. The sadness in that tone couldn't be fake. Henry _did_ know, but he couldn't really go to Tom and say 'Hey, I'm an emissary of All-Powerful Superplanar Energy Beings so _believe me_ when I say something.'

"And that's not even factoring the liberties and rights of _others_ he ignored over the years." Henry connected the wireless mouse to the laptop. "Including you and your family."

I looked at him, hard. "So there really _was_ surveillance in Tranquility."

"Not just there. Wherever anyone in your bloodline went. Not a permanent watch, though. Only for a while during the forming childhood years of every new Witwicky, and then on and off, to see if anything 'peculiar' arose." Henry finished setting up the laptop and inputted the login info. "In your case, it was fortunate you were totally ordinary, so I didn't have to jump through hoops to falsify reports and secure more spying shifts for myself. It was nice not to have to deal with the potential extra suspicion."

I stared at him. The way he talked made it sound as if he'd always had a personal interest in me. Or, well, my family line.

"Ah, but enough about that," the man finally finished setting up the laptop and initiated the boot-up sequence. It was the most rugged-looking, high-tech piece of machinery I'd ever seen in that size. Well, human-made machinery.

"Okay, so what's this for?" I moved closer to look at the screen.

"Something to pass the time." He opened an Internet browser but turned the screen away from me, throwing me a sly grin. "Sorry kid, secret info here. Wait like that a bit." I didn't see what he typed, but soon enough it was over and he turned the laptop for me to see again. I noticed that the website address was all in "********" if that was even possible. I didn't recognize the web page by look either. It was pretty plain really, with a basic design in black, white and grey. Metallic grey. Or silver.

It looked like a database of useful links. Huh. For all I knew, it might even be an offline website stored on the laptop's own hard drive. "So what's this?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the rangers observing us, but I was pretty sure our conversation didn't reach their ears, even though _theirs_ reached _mine_.

"Hmm." He unceremoniously pulled me into the chair in front of the laptop. I yelped and glared at him, and he just smirked unrepentantly. "See, kid, your ability to understand and replicate actions might be at least partly psychic, so if the one performing an action isn't within your range, whatever it is…" he waved a hand a few times, clearly saying he didn't know or intend to tell me what my range was. At least at the moment. "… then you might not, in fact, be able to replicate it just from seeing it. This website will help us figure out if you _can_ do it. So go on, open a link. Actually, just click that 'Random' button."

Still peering at him suspiciously, I nonetheless did as he said. I clicked "Random" and the page opened to an identical one, but which also happened to have an embedded video.

A video of some dude putting together a gun and demonstrating its use. Specifically, an ICS-190 GLM Grenade Launcher.

Next to the screen there were a couple of paragraphs describing the weapon and its capabilities. I assimilated the information instantly, and at this point I didn't have it in me to be surprised. After all, I'd basically memorized, at a glance, the personal details of all the agents that had been involved in our abduction. Well, the personal info of those moronic enough to actually carry revealing identification of that sort with them.

For a clandestine secret organization, Sector Seven seemed to suffer from some pretty embarrassing lapses in discretion.

Glancing to the bottom right corner, I saw the clock indicating that it was 02:45. Still some time to go until dawn.

Well, nothing to it I supposed.

Settling in for a long wait, I clicked play, and watched.

"-. .-"

It was hours later that my almost trance-like state met an abrupt end. My 'Random' clicks, which never seemed to turn up any link I'd already visited, had opened an e-book on human anatomy and I was going through it at a rate of three pages per second. Once I was done, I reached out to pick up a glass of water I'd gotten myself some time earlier.

I felt the vibration in my chair a nanosecond before ripples disturbed the surface of the water, and I didn't even have enough time to wonder if I was developing telekinesis before the entire Rec Hall trembled as if hit by an earthquake.

Bumblebee, who'd sat down with his back against the wall to my right, suddenly jumped to his feet. _"Alert! Alert!"_ The radio blared as his optics zeroed on me. " _Code red Admiral!"_

"Fuck!" Lennox cursed, jumping from his chair and grabbing his rifle. "We're under attack, aren't we?" His half a dozen soldiers went on alert immediately, even before I had a chance to get out of my seat.

There was a ping on the laptop. All applications suddenly closed and a black command prompt window launched on its own. The cursor blinked twice before words started writing themselves. 'A flier's EMP took out communications. Main Power generators under fire. I'm initiating full evac protocols for civilians, full military mobilizations for the agents. Be there in five to coordinate.' Did he even have _clearance_ for that? Alarms started to blare as soon as the last word appeared. "Comms down! Shit!" I hurried around the table, throwing all the hardware back into the briefcase haphazardly. "Shit shit shit!" I looked at Lennox who was almost upon me. "Decepticons are attacking the power generators!"

"Dammit!" Lennox rubbed a hand over his tired face, but that was all the tension he let be seen. Right after, he was all business. "You! Bumblebee right?"

" _Affirmative!"_

"Your fellows. What's their ETA?"

'Bee clicked and whirred, trying to find some radio clip that would help answer. His optics dimmed, and I think he was checking with the others, then they brightened, but instead of amusement or hope they showed worry. _"In my darkest hour, I could not foresee / That the tide could turn, so fast to this degree."_

"On hour?" Lennox asked in disbelief. "We might not have an hour! The thing that took out Soccent didn't even take fifteen minutes to do it!"

Bumblebee shook his helm. " _Not that long now, baby!"_ Contrary to the glib sound clip, I could feel his frustration with his inability to actually communicate properly.

"'Bee!" I shouted, pausing in my packing. Information from five different technical manuals swam through my head. Almost all of it useless. Almost. "Your voice boxes can transmit sound bytes over radio, right?"

The yellow Autobot nodded, but he also voiced his confusion the only way he could _"I've got nothing.'"_

I pointed at him in realization. "I know _yours_ is broken, but you can obviously receive!" I really hoped my idea would work.

The bot straightened. Even his doorwings perked up.

I was operating fully on intuition at this point. "Can you project holograms like the others too? And can you relay exactly what we speak?"

" _Aye aye, sir!"_

My mind finally caught up with what my intuition was trying to tell me. "Can you use all that to patch Optimus through?"

A pause, then Bumblebee palmed his face, and despite that I could see clearly it was a crude imitation of the ever so heartfelt human gesture, I knew his embarrassment was real. Not wasting another second, Bumblebee faced away from us, brought a servo to the side of his head and flipped a switch that hadn't been there a second ago. His optics spilled out light, light that solidified into the figure of Optimus Prime in all his 38-foot-tall glory.

He barely fit in the hall. "Bumblebee," I called out. "Scale it down." I looked up to meet Optimus' optics. "Unless he minds?"

After an instant, Bumblebee cut off the projection and then started it again.

The red and blue mech stood face-to-face with us now, at the same height as the soldier next to me. I wondered how he could so easily split his attention when I knew he was probably driving down the road somewhere in Peterbilt truck form. "Greetings." It was Lennox he spoke to. "I am Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots."

Shaking himself out of the stupor of seeing the robot at full size, even if so briefly, Lennox pulled himself together surprisingly fast. "William Lennox. Captain. Army rangers." The response was crisp, as I'd expected from military. "Good to finally meet you Optimus Prime, sir." Nothing like seeing the Bot in his full, gigantic glory to instill respect.

"Likewise. What is your status?"

Lennox had a firm grip on the rifle hanging on his front. "Enemy attack in progress as of 2 minutes ago. No information on how they knew where to come. They're targeting the power generators. Number of enemies is unknown, but at least one flier confirmed. Reinforcements needed _badly_. What's your ETA?"

"Approximately 40 minutes, but we can-" he was cut off when a muffled explosion reached our ears and the place shook again. It wasn't strong enough to make us lose balance, but no one seemed to care about that any more than I did. Not when everything suddenly went dark.

"Oh crap," I said.

Other than Bee's two blue optics, Optimus was the only source of light left, a glimmering figure in our midst. He opened his mouth piece to say something, but didn't get the chance.

The pitch black around us was replaced by the returning light, but before anyone could say anything the laptop on the table behind me pinged again, making me whirl around in surprise. How on Earth could it even get notifications if the communications were knocked out? "Main power down." I read. "Backup generators on." I felt cold when I saw what the last words were. "You have 20 minutes." I didn't voice the last bit. ' _I'll try to meet up with you after I get your parents safely away.'_

No mention of Mikaela, but that was expected. There was no way she would stay out of whatever came next.

"Right!" Lennox snapped, sounding pissed. He looked from Optimus to Bumblebee. "I don't give a damn _what_ that moron Simmons thinks. You're going after the Cube and leaving with it."

The hologram cut off and 'Bee only needed a second to transform into the yellow 2006 Camaro. Both doors opened as soon as he was on four wheels.

I closed and grabbed the briefcase, then shut the laptop and pulled it under my arm, sprinting for the driver door.

"Okay, listen up!" Lennox barked at his men. "Epps, you're with us! The rest of you, on foot! Get to the Cube room on the double! Michaels, you and Jones get the others and meet us there! Move it people!"

The soldiers saluted and ran off, disappearing into the human-sized access corridor.

Lennox sprinted over and got into the passenger seat, wisely fastening the seatbelt. Epps climbed in the back. As soon as that was done, the doors shut and Bumblebee careened forward, knocking aside a table and a couple of chairs as he went. In 4.2 seconds, we were back in the tunnel, and the car was moving forward at a speed significantly higher than the one he'd used to get Henry and me there.

And the speed kept increasing. I was dimly aware of Epps' increasingly frantic mutterings as I kept sinking more and more into the back of my chair from the inertia that the yellow Camaro never allowed to truly run its course.

There was a single turn that had to be taken, the one that would get us out of the tunnel and into the AllSpark chamber. Going forward the rest of the way would mean reaching the hangar where Megatron was being kept (now thawing), and that was the last thing anyone wanted.

Bumblebee swerved sharply, and despite my faith in him I felt, for one moment, that I was about to die. Killed in a car crash and reduced to a bunch of smears on the wall and shattered gears.

The bot cleared the turn with just an inch to spare, and while our seatbelts kept me and Lennox in place, Epps didn't have that luxury, so he ended up face-planting into the window. The groan of pain was very telling, but the lack of slurring implied he hadn't hit it nose-first, so at least there was that.

'Bee blared the horn as loudly as he could when we finally drove into the AllSpark hangar, barely one minute after leaving the rec room. It made a couple of scientists jump aside in fright, even though the bot wouldn't have hit them regardless. Bumblebee stopped several meters shy of the Cube and snapped the doors open. I hurried to get out, still carrying the laptop and briefcase, and Lennox was quick to exit too.

Not as fast as Epps though. "That does it! I'm not doing that again unless I get a seatbelt or I'm driving!"

My Autobot guardian didn't pay him any mind. He swiftly went bipedal and, after a cursory glance around the room, he made a beeline for the AllSpark.

"Hey!" I grimaced in distaste. So Simmons was there. Lovely. Weren't we supposed to be allies now? Even if this was all just the worst ever case of 'enemy mine?'

Bumblebee ignored him, striding uninterrupted, with optics set on the cube. "Hey!" Simmons yelled again from the right, taking off at a fast walk. "Oh thank God-" I blinked in surprise. "Right! Kid!" I turned to him. "Our generators are being picked off! The power to the NBE1 room is failing. If those robot friends of yours are coming, now would be a good time to say it."

"Yes!" Lennox stepped up. "Yes, they're coming, but they won't be here for 40 minutes."

"40 minutes! We don't have forty minutes!"

"We know," Lennox cut him off, pointing at Bumblebee. "That's why he's here."

"Simmons!" I turned my head to behold the source of the voice. Secretary Keller looked harried as he hurried to our position, trailed by his bodyguard, a subdued Tom Banachek and pretty much everyone else working in Hoover Dam right now. "What's going on! Crap's hitting the vents I take it?

I didn't pay attention. I was too busy getting an armful of Mikaela when she finally reached me and hugged me. Mikeala _hugged_ me! Hugged. Mikaela! Me!

Even if I got killed in the next 24 hours, life was good.

Lennox answered Keller instead. "I'm afraid so, sir."

"God save us all," Keller rubbed his eyes, then glanced between me and the mech, and when he saw me seemingly oblivious to anyone other than Mikaela Banes, he returned his attention to Lennox. "Well, for what it's worth the president agreed to cooperate with the Autobots before communications fell. They can do as they see fit and we are to offer any and all assistance we can provide."

Simmons gave my guardian a peculiar look. "Let's hope he knows what he's doing then."

There was a flash of blue light, energy washing over the Cube in a wave.

"Oh, he's doing somethin' alright," Epps muttered.

Before the discussion could continue, Bumblebee began manipulating the Cube, digits digging into indents and twisting previously unseen gears. A hum sent shivers down my spine and through my every fiber. The alien artefact began to rumble and rattle as its construction divided into dozens of smaller cubes, then millions upon millions of smaller ones that collapsed like swarming dominoes. Bumblebee kept sliding his servos over the underside of the AllSpark, slicking and pressing sockets as they appeared.

"Oh my God…" Mikaela murmured, and this time, unlike when the Autobots first met with us, _I_ took her hand in _mine_.

I didn't need to look behind me to know everyone else was enraptured by how the gigantic object folded in on itself until it was barely larger than a football.

When the mech was finished, he gazed upon the object in his servo. _"Message from Starfleet captain - Let's get to it!"_

"He's right!" Lennox cut in, effectively taking over the whole situation. Thank God. "We won't last for long here with Megatron in the other hangar. Especially not unequipped." He faced Bumblebee. "Can you patch Prime through?"

Bumblebee reached up and activated his holo-projector again. Optimus appeared in full size, drawing gasps of surprise and awe, though he heeded none. Spotting the AllSpark in Bumblebee's servo, his optics stayed riveted on it for a long, somber moment. I saw so many emotions pass through him that even my enhanced mind couldn't distinguish between them.

But the moment passed, and Optimus turned to behold us, and despite that everyone knew he was just an insubstantial image the people except me, Mikaela and Will still backed off when the giant mech stepped forward and got to one knee. "Captain. Secretary Keller. You have our sincere gratitude."

I winced.

"Right, don't count yourself lucky yet," Lennox ever so professionally burst his bubble. "Megatron's still thawing and he's just a few hundred meters away."

"Can you not buy yourselves time until we arrive?"

"Not with the power cut. But Mission City is 22 miles from here. We can go and hide the cube somewhere in the city."

"… We will attempt to engage the enemy forces outside the city limits if at all possible." The real message was _that will put a significant number of civilians at risk but_ Optimus didn't say it.

I got it regardless.

I could guess what Lennox was thinking too. "We'll try to arrange for aerial pickup of the precious cargo. " _If Megatron gets the Cube, he'll transform technology into drones and kill everyone so it won't matter unless we do this._

"Right! Okay!" Keller seemed glad to finally have a course of action to follow.

"But we can't make a stand without the air force," Will went on, speaking to the SecDef. "Sir, you'll have to find a way to send a message to authorize air support. And we'll need equipment and transports." Keller started brainstorming with Simmons about how that could be done. But it was Tom Banachek who led S7, so that's who Will addressed last. "Do you have an arms room?"

"-. .-"

We almost made it.

Key word being almost.

Despite that I'd basically read instruction manuals and watched tutorials about every kind of gun in that extensive arms room, I didn't get to take any of them along with me. Partly because I wasn't military (and, thus, not authorized) and partly because there were already more people in need of guns than there were supplies. And even if I did get to take a gun, I doubt I'd have managed to get equipped with the speed and precision those soldiers exhibited.

The whole process took astonishingly little time, even though Bumblebee had been antsy the whole while, as he stood outside the arms depot in the access tunnel. Everyone really did give "on the double" a totally new meaning. When we were ready, I took Bumblebee's passenger seat, briefcase in front of my feet, while Mikaela went in the back, next to the AllSpark. And as everyone piled up in their badass black jeeps with miniguns on top, I actually dared think we might manage to make our getaway.

We were all geared and ready to roll out, and nearly everyone not involved in this mess was safely ensconced in bunkers located within the canyon wall. Only Simmons, the SecDef and his weird advisors Glen and Maggie were elsewhere, and the old army radio room they'd headed to was also in the cliff face, not the dam itself. Well out of the way.

Our one mistake was not taking point.

Once everyone was ready to go, Lennox ordered the seven vans to take position around us, to form a perimeter and escort us out of Hoover Dam and toward Mission City. It was a sound plan, and like all plans it didn't survive the enemy.

A hundred meters from the arms room, the entire tunnel seemed to shake under the fury of an impact, far below. Noises of explosions reached my ears, and despite the lighting in the tunnel the flashes of light from behind cast flickering shadows on the road and walls around us.

Then the guy manning the minigun on top of the van right in front of us turned to look back and gasped in shock.

And cursed.

I admit I screamed when a missile came out of nowhere and blew him up along with the transport in a nearly deafening blast of flame and molten metal. Bumblebee swerved wildly, barely avoiding a collision with the remains of the flaming vehicle, but not the concrete edge of the tunnel. It was fortunate we came to a stop, even if we did almost flip over, jolting in our seats and suffering bruises from the seatbelts.

A shadow passed overhead somehow, and I barely got a glimpse of the completely _alien_ aircraft – how the hell could it fly in there?! It barely fit! – before the jet spun on its axis and folded on itself, wings giving way to arms and thrusters making room for legs. The sounds of folding plates were like those of scissors cutting through air, again and again.

Megatron landed on the asphalt about forty feet ahead of us and skidded a few meters, grating in my ears and throwing sparks of superheated rock everywhere. The van behind us tried to adjust course, but it failed and ended up slamming sideways into the giant mech's shin. Megatron barely stumbled, even though the hit had been fatal for the humans inside.

Tom Banachek had been in there… Our path would have led us past the passage leading to the bunkers. It would have taken less than half a minute to pull over, let him out and see him off…

The Decepticon kicked the van contemptuously and batted it aside with his gigantic, four-taloned claw, then focused on us. He didn't even seem to register the five armed vehicles trying to form some sort of perimeter behind him. Red optics pinned us with a manic intensity I wished I could have lived my whole life without ever seeing. "Ah… The AllSpark." It was a rumbling voice that held none of the majesty of Optimus'. Just a crazed fervor that spelled nothing good. He made one step. Just one step was enough to send my heart in my throat. "At last."

From within the car, I couldn't hear Lennox yell any command, but I assume he did, because three miniguns started firing sabot rounds at Megatron's back. The mech flinched, hunching forward in surprise, as if he didn't expect us humans to have weapons capable of harming him.

Nearly submerged in internal hysterics by that point, I wondered if he really thought we only knew how to deal with issues by flinging ice at them.

Megatron _growled_. "Damned _insects_!" Then turned around, meeting the streams of bullets head-on, transforming his claw into a plasma canon as he did. He took aim and his weapon charged-

The tunnel on both sides of him abruptly exploded.

Chunks of wall half his size slammed into the mech from both directions. Debris rattled against his chrome plating and his cannon arm was _moved_. The grunt of pain and surprise devolved into a howl of rage as his shot was deflected rightward. It blew apart the wall and ruined the rest of the supports holding up the tunnel roof. Steel beams that had once held everything in place no longer could be considered whole, and the entire tunnel caved _in_.

I saw it all in slow motion. My brain was processing each and every one of the frames picked up by my eyes. The concrete above cracked and splintered, chunks as large as half my room at home broke off, falling. Megatron saw what was happening and struggled to regain the balance he'd lost.

That was it, I thought as I watched the harbinger of death scramble away from the collapsing structure that had quite effectively cut him and us from the rest of the armed forces. We were toast. We were going to be trapped here with _him_.

But reality proved not to be such a bitch after all, and it made me realize that there was one thing I'd neglected to wonder about. Specifically, why in hell the walls had exploded on Megatron at all.

The giant mech turned around, one claw on the cracked road for support. He would only have to leap forward to avoid being buried.

A dark shadow jumped through dust and smoke from the hole now decorating the right tunnel wall. It leapt, rolled into the space between us and Megatron and regained its balance, foot sliding on the ground as the man settled into a wide crouch. I barely had time to notice the bazooka on his shoulder before a rocket was fired into Megatron's face at nearly point blank range.

The man tossed the rocket launcher aside and hurled himself backwards, rolling head over heels away from the blast. Smoke and dust was kicked up with a thundering roar, but the shockwave had done its part in delaying the mech enough for the debris to bury him. I doubted it would hold him for long, and the howl of rage confirmed it.

Henry – because it could only be that crazy spy hermit – used a hand to push himself up, adjusted his long coat and the strap of the brown backpack he was wearing, then casually side-stepped one last falling piece of concrete before he hastily ran in our direction. I stared dumbly at the new crack in the pavement left by the debris that he had just avoided.

Bumblebee finally pulled away from the wall and, much to my surprise, opened the driver's seat door for Henry to get in without hesitating.

The duplicitous agent undid the diagonal strap holding his backpack and tossed it between the front row seats before getting in. "Drive back the way you came. Go go go!"

Bumblebee's tires screeched against the road as he did the tightest U-turn _ever_ , then he hit the acceleration all the way down, rocketing back the way we came. That didn't last for long, though, because the tunnel ahead of us started to cave in as well, and we had to slow down and avoid each larger piece of concrete. What was going on? " _Houston, we have a problem. – It's all coming down – He ain't done yet."_

I paused for a moment. "Megatron's not staying down and the rest of the tunnel's collapsing too?"

_"And the earth split and swallowed'im whole it did – 'twas nothing left, nothing!"_

I didn't know what he… oh shit! "Are you saying the whole dam is about to come down on us?"

_"Affirmative, Captain."_

"What?" Mikaela gasped. "'Bee, are you sure? How do you know? Can you scan that deep?"

"He doesn't need to," Henry cut in, bending forward to unzip the bag he'd brought. "He can feel the vibrations and the way they change as we near the epicenter."

"Who _are_ you?" She asked. "Where did you come from? How did you blow up the tunnel? _Why_ did you do it? How did you even know?"

Henry tossed me an amused glance, then returned his attention to his bag. "To answer those questions in reverse, I knew where the commotion was because of the noise. I got there though a janitorial maintenance corridor. I could do what you just saw because I've been planting remote-controlled explosives of my own design into the concrete that this base is made of for the past seven decades. I came from-"

"What?!" Both me and Mikaela yelled, and I even heard 'Bee's radio produce a burst of static. "What do you mean you slipped explosives into the concrete?" Mikaela asked. Her composure had well and truly been shot.

"What do you mean for the past seven decades?" I asked at the same time.

Henry pulled out a pair of stick-like… things from the bag. "I'm a lot older than I look, lad." He handed me one of the… handheld lasers? What? "Be ready to point that behind you, okay?"

I stared at him, but Mikaela was still in the game. As if I didn't already have enough of a reason to be shocked, she reached behind the AllSpark and pulled out a gun, which she then pointed at Henry's head. "Let's try this again." The click of the safety going off was loud in the tense car. "Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you blow up the tunnel? How did you even know where and when?"

I could only gape, and didn't even register the sharp turn Bee had to take to avoid a falling piece of ceiling. Had she slipped the gun out of sight while everyone else was getting kitted? My intuition had failed to warn me of this.

Mikaela gazed at me rather sardonically. "Don't give me that look, Sam. It's not like you have a monopoly over stunts like this."

I think I corrupted her.

For his part, Henry peered down the barrel of the gun, looking amused and impressed. He addressed me first. "This one's a keeper." Then he grinned and turned in his seat as much as he could, giving my girlfriend a winning smile. "Hello, My Lady. I am Henry Matthews, Sector Seven agent, reincarnated hermit, deep level undercover operative for The Ascended Brotherhood, and Seeker on the Road to Enlightenment. Qualification: Adept."

If ever there were any words that could leave Mikaela Banes absolutely flabbergasted, those were the ones.

Henry only smiled wider, gesturing grandly at the backpack between our seats. "And _this_ is my Bag of Tricks!"

She tossed me a helpless glance, begging me to tell her Henry was the crazy one, not her. Well, he _was_ crazy, probably, but not like _that_. I could only smile helplessly. "I _did_ say you'd get an explanation today…"

My girlfriend (to be?) stared at me, wide-eyed. "You're joking…"

Henry reached into his bag, stopped and looked forward. "Don't turn," he told my car. "Keep going on ahead."

Bumblebee drove past the side-path leading to the room where the AllSpark had been kept. And as he did, sounds of explosions and an enraged roar came from far back.

"Oh God, you're _not_ joking are you?" Mikaela's hands dropped, and while she didn't let go of the gun, it was slack in her hands now.

"Put the safety back on," Henry told her, handing her a second laser. "May as well make yourself useful and take this."

"And do _what_?" I shrieked. It sounded as high-pitched as it did before my cognitive readjustment. Maybe the key was not panicking at all. Right.

"Point it behind us, at anything that moves. He's coming," Even as he reached into the bag and Henry never took his eyes off in the rear-view mirror. Whatever he saw, I couldn't tell. But I twisted to do as he said anyway, and after a second the green beam of my laser was joined by a red one as Mikaela did the same. "Window down please." He pulled out a two-foot-long, chrome and yellow rod from the bag and tapped a rune on the middle ring that meant "5." I had no idea how I knew that. The language wasn't part of anything I'd read or watched during the past 24 hours. And it wasn't Mechan either.

Bumblebee lowered the window as requested, just as I saw Megatron, in jet form, come from around the bend. God, he was so _fast-_

Just before the silent count of five, Henry tossed the rod out the window, and I heard more than saw it hiss, split into two halves, which turned out to be rockets. Both of them ignited and hurtled through the darkness, right at where our lasers were pointing. The first one blew up like a highly explosive grenade in the mech's cockpit (damn, but Mikaela's aim was _good_ ). It made Megatron lose trajectory and hit the wall, forcing him to transform unless he wanted to lose all speed from a collision and fall behind. And just as he did _that_ , the second missile reached him, slipping through the momentary cracks of the transformation and ending up conveniently _inside_ him when it detonated.

Megatron howled in surprise and shock when his internal circuitry and energon lines were filled with ice, like the one he'd become so intimately familiar with over the centuries.

Holy shit, that kind of luck was _obscene_.

"Whoa…" Mikaela breathed, still pointing her laser through Bumblebee's rearview window.

"Whoa is right…" I said. But wait. I narrowed my eyes, and I suppose this would be a good time to say my night vision was actually pretty good now too? "He's not down." The mech was getting up, and he was _angry_. "He's not staying down."

"I didn't expect him to," Henry said calmly from next to me.

Far behind us, Megatron bashed aside what was in his way. "What _was_ it supposed to do then? Buy time for another shot?" I stared desperately at The Bag of Tricks like it was the Holy Grail. "Please tell me you have more of those things!"

"I think there's one left," Henry said blandly. "But that's not what the time we bought was for."

"Then what?"

The crazy hermit spy pulled a remote activator from his pocket. A simple thing, a red thumb button on top of a bronze tube. "For us to pass through a certain section of this tunnel so I could use this short-throw signal projector and do… this." He pressed the button.

And a 20-meter section of the tunnel behind us exploded inwards from above and the sides, just as Megatron was passing underneath. I stared and listened at the howl of frustration as Megatron was buried yet again. His rage could be heard even over the racket of the blasts and stone impacts. Then another explosion came from above, then another, and another even higher, adding to the mountain of rocks and steel that the Decepticon would have to dig out of.

Just how many explosives had Henry planted?

As if guessing my thoughts, the man glanced at me sideways. "What did you _think_ I meant when I told you I would have brought this entire dam down decades ago if I had to?"

Behind us, Mikaela shifted her weight, and when I looked in the rear-view mirror her wary suspicion was plain to see.

The tunnel ended, and we were finally at the entrance to the NBE-1 hangar where Megatron had been kept on ice. The scene was one of utter devastation, with fumes and steam hissing from broken pipes, supports and catwalks mangled nearly beyond recognition. Through Bumblebee's still open side window came the stench of death. I was thankful for the chill left behind by the LN2 lines. It made the smell bearable, at least enough that it didn't turn my stomach.

Bumblebee could drive no further in vehicle form, so he stopped and ushered us out. I exited, bringing the briefcase with the laptop along. Mikaela took the AllSpark and followed, and Henry, of course, took his bag with him. Once we were all on solid ground, Bumblebee began to transform, surprisingly slowly. Had the collision with the wall done damage to his internal parts?

I didn't have time to ask because Mikaela set the Cube down and, taking advantage of the fact that Henry had his back to her, pulled her gun again and pointed it at him. "Right." The click of the safety was heard again. "I think now we can continue. What's the deal with this blatant sabotage?"

With a sigh, Henry stood and faced her. "My lady, didn't we already go through this?"

"Tough break." Wow, she was really pissed. I glanced pleadingly at Bumblebee, but the bot had as much of an idea of how to proceed as I did.

Which was none at all. "Mikaela-"

She cut me off. "No Sam. I don't know what he did to make him trust you and I won't care until he tells me exactly why he apparently spent his whole life setting up Hoover Dam to be blown up. I'm not a fan of Sector Seven, but no matter what you say that's not normal or sane."

"We don't have time for this!" I hissed, walking towards her. "The dam is crumbling down! All of it."

"That's the problem, Sam! Since I doubt the Decepticons would bomb this place while their leader was still inside, I'm betting the one who actually caused it is _him_. And I want to know _why_. The only reason I haven't done anything more drastic is because he at least bothered evacuating everyone first."

Hushed explosions could be heard from the way we came.

"I'm waiting."

Henry raised an eyebrow, even gaze never failing. His silence was as blatant a hint as could be done in that situation. It made her bristle, but it did its job: called her bluff.

Which was why him actually _answering_ was so shocking, though he spoke to _me_ , not her. "Do you know why we can get charged with alien radiation from these robots or the Cube and not suffer any radiation poisoning? It's because the energy in that Cube, and _them_ , follows a completely different set of existential _laws_."

Mikaela didn't like being ignored. "What does _that_ have to do with anything?"

"If you want your answer, young lady, you'll let me give it before that alien catches up with us."

Mikaela glared but didn't say anything more.

Henry faced me fully, heedless of the firearm still aimed at his head. "In every advertisement about batteries, companies say how much energy they store, but that's not really a correct thing to say. Batteries don't _store_ energy. They store substances and electrodes than can initiate hydrolysis and, thus, generate a sustained flow of electrons by maintaining a charge difference, called a current. They don't _store_ energy per se. Capacitors are the ones that supposedly do that, but even then it's a crude definition. But that…" He waved in the direction of the Cube that sat innocently on the ground. "That cube can store energy in its pure form, and it's because that energy was created by a different being than the ones that made _this_ solar system. The energy is different and exists under a different set of _Rules_. It can exist independently even outside of it. Within _anything_ and any _one_."

I could feel Mikaela holding back a 'Get to the point.'

"But lots of that energy has been discharged in this place since the 1930s. Some was used for those experiments, making mutations like the one you saw yesterday. But much of it dispersed and remained embedded in the walls, the floors, even the mechanical parts of this entire dam. But this place was not made to hold the energy. Anyone with the right tools could gather it in a matter of hours. Others that would use it for foolish ends. Sector Seven may have had the potential to do more good than harm, and it did, but there are other factions that we would never bother infiltrating because the same could not be said about them."

"… What are you saying?" The edge had well and truly disappeared from Mikaela's voice.

Henry was dead serious when he answered. "The amount of AllSpark energy in this place is enough to blow up the entire solar system if, say, humans or even Cybertronians decided to try and make their own AllSpark. So yes, I initiated the destruction of Hoover Dam, to make sure the bulk of that energy is washed away and dispersed by the river and, eventually, the ocean."

Another muffled blast echoed from the tunnel, but neither me nor Mikaela paid attention. What we'd just heard was just too chilling, and I could hear even Bumblebee whirr in concern at the words.

"You…" I swallowed. "You know of someone who would try that, don't you?"

Henry crossed his arms, ignoring how Mikaela slowly lowered her gun. "Do you know why the higher powers in legends and scriptures never really give us all the information we might ask for? Setting aside the fact that just because we have free will and think we deserve to know doesn't mean they lack the free will to disagree with our opinion."

I shook my head.

"It's because there's usually a way to find the information through normal channels. And if and when we find that information, it usually means we can handle knowing it, and can act on it wisely. Or we get killed or abducted for it I suppose, but then that's almost always karma at play."

Further wisdom imparting was interrupted by the sound of a particularly loud boom from whence we came.

"Right, we wasted enough time. Everyone stay within the mouth of the tunnel!" Henry ushered us there, including Bumblebee. Once done, he took the briefcase from me, opened it and pulled out the laptop and mouse. He packed the things into the smaller compartment of his backpack and tossed the briefcase away.

That done, he went over and picked up the cube, then walked and held it out for Bumblebee to take. "I'd put it in the bag, but the slightest bump would probably make it discharge enough energy to turn all the gear inside into living, insane robots. Get ready for a long, stiff climb."

Bumblebee tilted his head, then tapped his hip joint. Gears moved, blue-white light flashed and he pulled out some sort of cable from subspace. Taking the Cube in his servo, he began to wrap the cable around it, shaping it into a net with a degree of dexterity that left me bewildered. Second later, it was securely affixed. As if 'Bee had fastened the AllSpark to a utility belt that wasn't even there.

Henry turned and stood between us and the hangar, pulled a longer rod from his coat's inner pocket and touched the small emitter to the indent near the base.

An explosion destroyed the roof of the hangar.

Then Henry connected the small remote to a second port, and another explosion sounded, just as the first cascade of dust and debris crashed over the already huge pile of destruction there. Bumblebee moved to shield us just in case, and I put an arm around Mikaela and flinched along with her whenever another explosion came.

It took another three for the whole episode to be over, and at the last of it Henry turned around, away from the dust that finally spilled over into the tunnel and around him.

And when it settled, I looked forward and saw _light_.

Trading a look with my girlfriend(to-be), we both sprinted to see if we were really seeing what we thought we were seeing. I stared up, and up and up. Bumblebee came to stand next to me and did the same, and I completely agreed with Mikaela when she whistled.

Bloody hell, Henry had just blown a hole through the roof all the way to the road running on top of the dam itself.

The blast that was heard behind us was followed by a rush of air, and we knew our time was over. "Shit! Okay…" I looked around, trying to figure out what to do. "Okay. Grapple guns. We need grapple guns. Do you have grapple guns in that bag of yours?"

Henry quickly led the way through and over the results of the destruction he'd wrought. "Just one. But you'll do better without it. Unless you haven't noticed, there aren't any particularly solid ledges you can aim for."

"What? Then what are we going to do?"

Henry offered a hand and pulled me up on top of a large piece of collapsed ceiling, then did the same to Mikaela. "Your Autobot friend will carry you obviously."

"Oh." I stared at him, then at Bumblebee who'd easily climbed to stand next to us and was eyeing the broken steel beams and walls speculatively. "Right. Okay, so Bumblebee will take us and you'll use the grapple gun afterwards. Right. He should be able to catch it and pull it up."

"That's a wonderful idea I suppose…" Henry said, and something in his tone made me pause in my efforts to climb up through the wreckage. Ahead and above me, Mikaela also turned around, confused.

I wasn't. Something heavy seemed to settle over my shoulders as I slowly turned to look at him, hoping I'd heard wrong. "Oh no…" No _way_. "Oh no no _no_ , you don't get to do this! Not after the past hour! Not after the past day!"

"Sam?" Mikaela called out, and even Bumblebee, who was already at the wall, inspecting the closest possible support, turned his helm to watch us.

Henry smiled warmly at me and reached to his chest. Then, in a smooth move, undid the strap of his bag, spun it around him and settled across my torso.

I felt a rock drop in my gut. I couldn't believe this was happening.

Henry tightened the strap until the surprisingly light bag sat comfortably. "Your girlfriend's reaction was tame compared to what's expected for me if people found out what I did here." No. _No_. "Besides, I told you, I'm older than I look." No no _no_ , I rejected this situation. I _refused_. "Old enough to have lived a full life. Besides, Sector Seven will be disbanded after this. My mission is over now."

"Bullshit!" I exploded, slapping his hand away from me. "Bullshit, just like that bit about there being no way to use a grapple gun! I can't believe I actually believed that for a second!"

"Sam-"

"No!" I could be damned stubborn when I wanted to, and I damn well was going to be now. "You're coming and I'm not stepping away from this spot until you agree with me." The loudest explosion yet made itself heard from the tunnel mouth. I smirked, despite what it meant for us. "So I guess you'd better change your mind quick, because oth-"

Henry closed in, knit the fingers of both hands with mine, pulled them apart, stepped forward and pressed our bodies and foreheads together.

I felt as if the power of an exploding sun passed through me all at once, and belatedly I realized that must have truly been the sensation of such an experience. When this had happened two nights before, I'd known myself and I'd known _Them_ , but now it was different in a fundamental way. That communion of before had healed me of an ailment I didn't know I had, but now I realized that one thing had been missing from it.

I'd know Them and myself, but not _Henry_ who was acting as my healer.

But I knew him _now_ , and I knew his name was not Henry. Or hadn't been once, before he was born as this.

His hands gripped mine tighter and then he opened himself to me the rest of the way. I saw him, then. Truly _saw_ him and felt everything about him.

_Samuel, Give me a couple of days before you tell anyone about me, alright?_

Jesus Christ…

_It's not much time at all._

Christ, I was such a _moron_.

 _Brooding doesn't suit you,_ **_lad_.**

How did I miss all of those…?

_The one life I still remember, the one right before this one, had a lot to do with them._

Was I fucking _blind?_

_I'm a lot older than I look._

He'd dropped me so many _hints!_

I flinched under the intensity of his feelings, and the abundance of his utter _love_ for me brought me to my knees.

Then it was over. My knees were digging into rocks and grime, and the only reason I hadn't collapsed the rest of the way was because he'd dropped with me and was holding me in a tight embrace. My misty eyes stared blankly ahead from where I was leaning into his chest, and the lingering brightness of our connection slowly faded until only the sunlight streaming in from above was left.

Dear _God_ … Not a week ago I still thought he was lame and only wanted to sell his heirlooms on e-Bay to make some easy cash. Oh God. Oh my God _._ Oh my _God_.

I didn't even realize I was trembling until the embrace tightened around me.

Megatron was digging himself out, he was going to be there any minute but I couldn't find it in me to care. Not after…

"Set sadness aside, lad," he murmured in my hair. Then he tapped me on the back of the head twice and pushed away, grinning again that specific way of his. "You act like I'm going to get killed."

I looked away and sniffed. Man, I'd almost started crying. In the end, the lame one was me. "Aren't you?" I asked, voice thick.

"Hmm," He climbed to his feet and helped me to mine, but I still couldn't look at him. "I suppose you'll get to see either way. It's a pretty long climb after all." This time, I dared look at him. He was staring up, past the wreckage and into the sky above. I saw it, then, that explorer's spark that must have enchanted his fellow sailors during his previous life. For an instant, I imagined him with white hair, a rugged beard and mustache, and brown eyes like mine. The image was vividly interposed over the present.

Then it was gone and Henry looked at me again. "Don't feel bad. You'll get to keep your word too."

And for once, I was honestly surprised. "Wha-?" Reacted just like him too.

Then I yelped when a large, mechanical servo reached down and plucked me like a random piece of furniture. "Hey! Bumblebee, what-"

"You said you wouldn't step away from that spot until I did as you wanted, so this way you won't have to!"

I glared at Henry's flippancy in the face of doom, then at Bumblebee for his betrayal. Holding onto the plates of the shoulder opposite the one I'd been deposited on, Mikaela was staring at me half-way between awe and concern.

Right. So the communion had been visible. That explanation would have to be a long one.

Not baring to meet her gaze, I looked down at that... that _man_ who was smiling back. "See? This way you don't have to sacrifice the worth of your word for this."

"No, let's just sacrifice _you_ , right?" It came out bitter, but how else was I supposed to react now?

Henry narrowed his eyes and titled his head. "Come now, lad, it may have taken _dying_ for me to learn the lesson you learned two nights ago, but I still learned it." He turned away, his coat flourishing like a cape, only keeping his head craned in our direction. "True victory sacrifices nothing!"

I flinched again when he spoke those words, and it wasn't because of the rattling that came from the tunnel, or the sound of engines as the destroyer flew towards us. Nor was it because of the shudders that the Dam kept giving, the shudders that had been getting stronger over the past five minutes.

Henry gave one last look at us, then pinned Bumblebee's gaze with his own. "I leave him to you. Understand?"

Bumblebee nodded solemnly and reached up to briefly lay his servo over me. Then he turned around, bent his legs at the knees and jumped.

He cleared a whole level by that alone, and managed to grab onto the edge of the floor above us. With surprisingly little effort, he heaved himself up to continue on. Higher. Always higher. Through it all, I only stared down, my eyes incapable of tearing themselves from the figure of my forefather until he put an end to the eye contact himself.

With a last glance in my direction, he turned his back on us and jumped down from the pile of wreckage he'd been standing on. With sure steps, he strode around roof pieces and bent railings, ducking under a downed catwalk and disappearing from sight just as Megatron burst into the former hangar in jet form.

My heart jumped when the destroyer shifted in mid-air and landed on top of the scene of destruction. Bumblebee never stopped climbing, even as Megatron looked around, frustration mounting with every second. "Where are you, fleshlings. Where are you hiding?"

I hoped against hope he'd fail to look up, but he finally noticed the presence of _sunlight_ and craned his helm heavenwards.

Red optics met my eyes, and I stiffened. My grip on Bumblebee's shoulder plate got even tighter, knuckles turning white.

"Ah," the mech almost purred. "We meet again, youngling." Slowly, _taunting_ , Megatron morphed his right claw into a plasma cannon, aimed it at us and _fired_ -

I yelped as Mikaela screamed, but Bumblebee was not so weak to panic, and he was a scout, quick and agile. As soon as the destroyer released the plasma bolt, he threw himself up and to the side. Right servo grabbed precious support the same moment the wall exploded outward on our previous position. It had been nearly deafening, but Bumblebee was already leaning sideways, twisting his backstruts as he freed up his left hand, gun coming out of subspace and firing back.

The bolt hit Megatron in the left shoulder with an effect reminiscent of napalm, and sent him stumbling with a grunt.

But there was no time for joy. The angry, grey mech snarled, whirled around to glare at us. "Oh, so _unwise!_ " Then he bent his knees like Bumblebee had done not much earlier and jumped up, form shifting as soon as he'd cleared the shambles-

Two rockets came from the far side of what was left of the NBE-1 hangar.

And this time, both missiles slipped through the cracks during the transformation.

Megatron cried out in pain when blazing hot and freezing ice erupted inside him all at once. The explosion rattled him, and the sudden change in temperature wreaked havoc on his internal systems. It forced the transformation to abort mid-process. Plates snapped back with a hiss and the mech crashed back-first into the disaster below with a gasp of pain and shock. Cranes and catwalks groaned and snapped under the weight in a shower of sparks.

If Lennox hadn't told me about Scorponok's ability to regenerate, I would have risked hoping we'd all get out of this alive.

I followed the trajectory of the rockets to the one section of a terrace that was still attached to the wall. I was just in time to spot my great-great-grandpa lifting a rocket launcher on his right shoulder and sending a missile out like a flame-covered comet.

It hit Megatron right in the face the same moment he saw who'd downed him.

As I stared down in stupefaction at the scene, from where I was on the shoulder of the once again climbing Bumblebee, I distantly wondered where on Earth the guy was getting all those guns. Did he have hidden stashes _everywhere_?

I reviewed the past two days.

… probably yeah.

Megatron howled, more in surprise than pain, and pushed himself to his feet. It was a surprisingly clumsy effort, made no better by how the gravel and debris kept shifting under his pedes, but he had time enough to glare and retaliate with a shot of his own.

Henry tossed the bazooka aside and hurled himself out of the way, somehow rolling and nimbly finishing the move in a crouch despite the huge, blocky backpack he was wearing, and the multi-barreled gun that was strapped over it. The plasma shot exploded meters away from him, taking part of the platform with it. It made his black coat flutter in the resulting wind, but he did not flinch in the least. "Megatron!" He called out brazenly, grabbing the grenade launcher that he must have tossed ahead before he sent out the first two rockets. "Is that the way you greet _all_ your old acquaintances?" He fired five shots, and while two missed, two others hit and exploded against chest and shoulder plates, and a third blew away the debris Megatron's left foot was balanced on, making him slip.

With a growl of fury, the mech lifted himself in a crouching position and used his left claw to crush the pile in front of him into dust. I couldn't see his optics anymore, but I could almost sense the manic obsession with getting the cube being pushed aside. No longer would his single-mindedness render him so vulnerable to cheap shots from us.

God help us all.

Slowly, the grey mech rose to stand. "Very well human," his voice was surprisingly even now. Not wary, but still more focused than I'd heard it until then. "You have my undivided attention." Quick as lightning, his left servo grabbed a broken crane head and sent it smashing forward.

It almost had him, but Henry threw the grenade launcher over the railing and hoisted himself on it, then used his feet to give himself a boost. He cleared the area just as the crane smashed where he used to be, and his jump carried him past a follow-up volley of missiles. He flew far enough to reach out and grab onto a chain hanging from one of the catwalks that had not yet detached from the wall above him, but it loosened _now_.

Not two seconds later, Henry's swing landed him on the ground, and he whirled around to face his enemy again. As he did, his hand reached behind him to grab the portable minigun. I finally realized that the huge pack on his back was the ammo case, just as his spin ended in a flourish of fluttering black and he opened fire.

A stream of bullets with a rate of 4000 shots per minute burst from the rapidly spinning barrel gun. It sounded like a dozen jackhammers beating into concrete at once. It looked almost like a constant assault of laser fire as it cut a swath across the entirety of the hangar, peppering the walls with holes, chipping the last supports from the pillars still trying to stay upright. The sustained attack sliced the air like a scythe, denting armor plates and almost taking out one of Megatron's optics if not for the servo that he used to shield himself.

"Remember me now, Megatron?" Henry's voice somehow carried even over the noise of the minigun. "I found you on ice! And for my trouble you burned my eyes!"

Once his momentum was gone, Henry dropped the gun, shrugged off the pack of ammo on his back and took cover behind a large piece of what used to be the roof of the dam, the one that held up the road.

Not a second too early, because a cannon shot almost blew it apart completely.

I barely even registered Bumblebee's movements as he climbed, and Mikaela was just as speechless by this point as I was.

There was a lull in the fight. Henry, my twice-great grandfather reincarnated, stayed crouched behind cover and waited. On the other side of the ruined hangar, Megatron slowly straightened, and his vents were blowing air through his systems rapidly. I could almost feel his rage, but there was something else in there.

Taking aim, Megatron fired and blasted apart what was left of my grandpa's makeshift cover. The crazy spy pushed away, slid backwards across the floor and finished it on one knee. I couldn't see his face from high up, but I could almost imagine his flat, challenging stare.

And, to my absolute shock, Megatron subspaced his cannon. "I think I will kill you with my bare servos instead." He menacingly advanced on the still crouched form of my ancestor. With a jolt of fear I realized that I wasn't sure if his assumption that Henry was out of tricks was true or not. "Be honored, fleshling, that I would choose to dirty my claws with your blood."

I almost didn't see it from that distance, but something slid from Henry's left sleeve into his hand and he pressed a button.

The floor beneath Megatron's right pede imploded.

Of _course_ , I thought numbly. Henry had planted explosives _everywhere_.

The mech gasped in surprise as he lost balance, but with surprising nimbleness for something so large he slammed his servo on the ground to cut his fall, and used the other to across the space in front of him, almost slicing Henry to pieces if not for the fact that he knew it would happen –

I watched in shock as the man jumped and did a butterfly twist through the air, holding his arms close to his chest. He spun horizontally like a windmill and passed through the gap in between the mech's claws. He ended it with the right palm and foot on the floor, fell, rolled across gravel up to right next to the grenade launcher he'd tossed to the ground so much earlier. He took a hold of it when the momentum carried him back to his feet, and his left hand curled around the handle of the minigun nearby as he came to a stop.

The next-to-last grenade in the launcher hit Megatron's right ankle just as he managed to pull it out of the pit it had sunk into, and the ensuing loss of balance let his neck plating open to the concentrated fire of the minigun that came right after, guided to their target by the man who was wielding both high-caliber guns at the _same time_.

I didn't even realize we'd reached the top of our climb. I barely noticed when Bumblebee lowered us to the ground, or that he, himself, had crouched behind us and was staring in increasing amazement at the sight below. Staring and beeping in shock when the evil mech smashed the floor with his servo and pushed himself out of the way of the final grenade that left Henry's launcher. Away from the minigun that still peppered him with rounds.

Away from the _human_.

And instead of gloating or giving us any time to realize that Megatron had actually retreated in front of a puny organic, however briefly, Henry tossed his weapons away and pulled out a familiar rod. "I could have killed you. All these years I could have planted C4 inside your chassis and blown you to scrap. But instead, I used it for _this_." He ran the smaller rod across all the indents in it, top to bottom.

Hoover Dam shook in its entirety, as if level 10 earthquake had just hit it head-on. And half a second later, the sound of the explosions reached us, and they came from _everywhere_. _"May day, May day!"_ Bumblebee's radio crackled. _"She's going down!"_

Mikaela called my name and grabbed my shoulder, but I refused to step away. To look away. This was _important_.

Megatron jerked and looked around in alarm, then glared at Henry. "What have you done, you fool!?"

I didn't know if Henry glared back, but his voice sure as hell didn't suggest he was smiling. "What do you think?"

The floor beneath Megatron cracked, and the mech suddenly had to grab a hold of whatever he could to prevent himself from stumbling as the water began to pool around him and the walls around him began to crumble inwards. But they suddenly exploded, covering him. A particularly large section fell on him, and I knew there was no way he could transform and escape now.

Megatron howled and lashed out with a backhand, sending debris flying all over the place. It was a jerking, primal reflex of rage.

Henry couldn't avoid it all this time. He got hit in the side by a large piece of splintered wall.

I felt my heart skip a beat. Then another, and _another_.

He sailed all across the hangar, somehow missing all the metal poles and pipes sticking out, and the jagged concrete slabs layering the once-hangar. He crashed face-first near the wall opposite the tunnel entrance. But he refused to let that be the end of it. Even as the wall behind and above him split and let water spray through, he pushed himself up.

Black eyes met red optics steadily.

I could almost feel the hatred pouring off the Decepticon as he glared at the man standing tall, his back to the concrete that was ever so slowly cracking further and further.

"Know this, mad creature. I am only paving the way for another. One who is greater than I." He had to be talking about Optimus. No one else even came close to fitting that description in my mind. "He will baptize you with fire." His voice was strained as he struggled to stay on his feet, but his moves were sure as he reached into his chest pocket and produced one final activator. "But for now, I baptize you with water!" The final set of explosives detonated, shattering the wall behind him, giving way to the thousands of tons of water accumulated over decades from the Colorado river.

The whole structure shook. I could feel it under my feet, but I could not tear my eye away from what was happening below.

I saw every instant clearly, as though replayed on slow motion in front of my eyes. The water and plaster had nearly crushed that man and overtaken him when Megatron's pride and insatiable desire for revenge got in the way. With a roar, the Decepticon brought out his plasma cannon and fired, aim perfect, disregarding his word that he would kill Henry with his bare hands.

The plasma bolt reached Henry's position half a nanosecond before the water did, and I would have thought that would be what ended him if not for the memory of what he'd told me, right before Bumblebee picked us up and climbed away with us.

_Set sadness aside lad. You act as if I'm going to get killed._

Time seemed to slow to a stop to my eyes just as the shot and water were about to end him. My twice-great-grandfather showed utter serenity and was consumed entirely, disappeared in a flash of fire that had nothing to do either of the two.

 _It's hard to purify the physical body when everything you eat is 25% made of crap._ _The whole body ends up burning to nothing when Fusion occurs._

_Spontaneous combustion? You mean that actually happens?_

Alien plasma met tumultuous fresh water in a loud, searing, seething eruption of fire and steam, and I knew what everyone assumed had happened, and I didn't feel any urge to tell them otherwise.

My last glimpse of the chaos down under was of Megatron being washed away by the ensuing tide, Hoover Dam cracking and crumbling around him. And as I mechanically followed Mikaela's pull as she hurried me into Bumblebee's car mode, one random thought managed to push its way through the shock that had well and truly settled over my systems.

Apparently, spontaneous combustion was not so spontaneous after all.

Bumblebee shot down the road like the hounds of hell were after us, and I stared blankly ahead, unconcerned with the way the dam behind us steadily crumbled away like in a Hollywood movie about the end of the world. Even when we cleared the dam with barely a second to spare, Miakela's slumping sigh of relief barely reached me.

Only when we drove by the visibly relieved armed forces did I start to come out of it, and even that was only enough for me to notice the Bag of Tricks that had somehow ended up between the two front car seats.

Not even thinking about what I was doing, I unzipped the smallest outer pocket on the top and was strangely unsurprised to find a folder neatly tucked inside.

Pulling it out, I opened it and found a single, white sheet of paper, with a website address written in a language I didn't recognize but understood perfectly anyway. And below the web address were the login details.

Username: Archibald

Password: Amundsen.

I closed the folder with a snap and let my forehead drop to Bumblebee's steering wheel.

How in heavens was I supposed to feel now?


	7. Frantic Ruminations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bumblebee manages to get himself and his passengers away from the doomed dam. Oh, and the Allspark too. On the way to Mission City, he carries out an introspection. Then the 'Cons attack and things go to the Pit in a frag container.

My tires screeched against the asphalt as I practically rocketed past the human forces. I would have pushed my mad dash even faster if I didn't have two human passengers to worry about. As it was, we barely made it off the road running atop Hoover Dam before the whole thing broke under the weight of thousands of tons of water. A literal earthquake bit at my mudflaps and I couldn't tell if those were really explosion aftershocks I was still hearing, or if I was just imagining them. Either was possible, after being either a target or witness of so many of them over the past hour.

Crisis protocols refused to disengage on their own, so I had to issue an override before I succeeded in interrupting my acceleration. It wouldn't do to make it impossible for the humans to catch up. Sub-par their weaponry may be, but they were the only backup I had until the rest of my unit rendezvoused with us. Backup we may actually end up needing by the end of the day.

I felt my spark simmer with worry and frustration at the thought. The humans had been given a basic lowdown of the conflict, but I doubt they realized just how precarious the current situation was. And I didn't mean just the fact that we had no clue how many Decepticons were on Earth. That would have been bad enough on its own, but there was more, namely our state of battle readiness.

Or lack thereof, I admitted with an internal twinge.

I couldn't decide if I should feel elated or disapproving of how even the surprisingly level-headed Major William Lennox failed to ask us about it. Maybe he knew what answer he'd get and didn't want to ruin morale.

Battles against Decepticons were never easy, but we gave at least as good as we got most of the time, even when we were outnumbered, which was often. The odds were really stacked against us now, though. My own questionable status aside, the others not only expended resources surviving atmospheric entry (after traveling for many days through space from the edge of the Sol System, where our ship, the Xantium, was located), but they also had to reconfigure their frames to fit Earth disguises, _and_ spend every moment in motion since then.

Normally, our kind can go for about an Earth week or so before having to enter stasis (the normal cycle being of around six or seven hours). And it's not just about power. Recharging is the least of our worries as long as our spark chambers stay intact and we don't lose Energon (not that there's been a lot of that to go around without the Allspark). The real problem comes from our data banks getting clogged and fragmented, and from our primary memory modules getting bogged down with stray processing threads. Going into stasis (or recharge, even if it's ultimately incorrect to call it that) allows everything to be integrated in the Spark, and for any hacks or manipulation attempts to be purged. After that, every data bank is wiped clean. Only the sections of our processors that hold the firewalls are left alone, though even those are updated every third stasis cycle or so, or upon discovery of an attempt at cybernetic manipulation.

It was a small blessing that only short-term memory could be hacked because of that, or that no long-term brainwashing could be achieved. Unless someone could somehow infect the spark, which was a frankly terrifying thing to consider, so I deliberately didn't dwell on it much. None of it soothed my worries about the current predicament though.

Optimus and the others have had to go without a stasis cycle for over two weeks now. They couldn't afford to make the meteoric trip through the Sol System in stasis, not with Soundave in orbit around Earth, or with probable Decepticon presence on Mars and Jupiter's moons. Granted, over the millennia we've gotten used to staying online for longer stretches of time, but even with combat and crisis protocols our performance takes a hit the more we put off rest. And there's the alt-mode scanning and associated resource expenditure to consider, not to mention the ongoing adjustment to the atmosphere, gravity and human presence.

Based on that and past experience, I'd put us at 80% combat effectiveness overall, with Optimus _maybe_ managing 85%.

Five of us against (I'm being naively optimistic here) probably five or six enemies. Foes that haven't done anything over the past few years _but_ rest and/or sharpen their edge while waiting around for clues. Clues gathered by yours truly, because why _should_ they do anything when us goody two-shoes can do it for them? Perish the thought process! What's more, two of them are fliers. And did I mention that one of those fliers is Optimus' nemesis? Who has been taking a nice, long nap _almost right next to the Allspark_ for the past hundred years?

Humans have a saying that sarcasm is the natural defense against stupid. I'd add "hopeless" to the end of that adage if not for everything I witnessed since the last sunset.

I had a dozen different processing threads hard at work all the time. As I left streaks of black on the freeway, one was scanning for enemies, one was monitoring the status of my backup, and one was composing the holoreport Optimus would expect to receive once I rejoined them. The others were split among various different things, from self-diagnosis to constant Internet searches and hacks that would get a human arrested. My primary thread, however, hadn't strayed from the sensor array surveying the happenings inside my cabin ever since I switched to my car mode, back when the final explosions shook Hoover Dam to its foundation.

I should have probably been using that primary processing thread to watch over the Allspark, the cube nestled at the back. Instead, it was locked on the small human sitting almost bonelessly in the driver's seat. I didn't feel even the slightest urge to shift the focus away from him. Even after clearing the disaster zone and a further ten minutes of driving, Sam still hadn't lifted his head from my steering wheel. His heart rate, blood pressure and endorphin levels were a mess of numbers that could mean he was either experiencing shock or a very intense period of introspection. I couldn't tell for sure, given how clearly different from normal humans his physiology had become literally overnight.

The female, Mikaela Banes, seemed to share my worry, but also my reluctance to try and gain his attention. But it was getting really hard to keep quiet with each second that passed. I'd already zoomed in on the file folder resting haphazardly in his lap and failed to make helm or skidplate of it. Whatever language it was written in, not a hint of it was found on the Internet. I wasn't even sure it was a human language, given the geometry evoked by the characters. It looked mystical, if the word even applied. Sacred even.

And so I was inevitably forced to contemplate the topic I'd been deliberately trying to avoid ever since the female literally dragged Sam into my cabin: the other human. I had half a processor to think he may not even have been an actual human, but the rapidly growing data package stitched together from a myriad of web-based encyclopedias and myths begged to differ.

Henry Matthews. Proof that, even with the majority of humans themselves sharing the same opinion as us, we spoke far, far too soon when we labeled humanity's vast theology, mythology and folklore as "overactive imagination." From the moment of my unexpected release, the previous night, I put a fair bit of effort into maintaining my skepticism. I was even worried that the man was subtly brainwashing or infecting Sam with his insanity. Then came the game of horseshoes. After that, for hours on end my reservations were stomped on with such an off-handed degree of unintended brutality that I would have been rendered speechless if my broken vocalizer hadn't already left me that way. Throughout the night, I could only stare at Sam as he absorbed data at a rate that was damn close to our own, and gained new skills in minutes rather than years.

The cincher was what happened before the climb. No, it was earlier, when Megatron showed up. Just under an hour had passed since then, but it seemed so long ago already. My spark flared as shame threatened to overcome my processes at the memory. I'd _frozen_. And not from hitting the wall. That didn't even leave a scratch. No, it was Megatron's appearance, looming and terrible like the last time I'd seen him, so long ago. Even though it happened thousands of years ago, it was like I was transported back to Tyger Pax, with Megatron looming over me, reaching down for my throat, _laughing_ -

I terminated the thought process before it could go further and made me experience another flashback. It took a human burying the tyrant under a ton of rubble to get me out of it last time, although that wasn't all of it. It was the way his presence – unfamiliar but confident and _comforting_ – flooded the whole place when he appeared and shot Megatron in the face with that rocket launcher. I felt it enshroud the area, like I always felt in the presence of Sentinel Prime, and like I always feel the presence of Optimus Prime. The nuance was distinct from theirs, it was always unique, but…

Long ago, during my first vorns as initiate at the Allspark Temple of Al Simfur, I came forward about my odd perception ability, but no explanation was found for it, and I ultimately decided to keep it to myself when every medic assumed I was glitched from overexposure to the Cube's energy. Same for the priests. Some even started to say I should have my time with the Cube cut back, maybe my training as priest terminated since I didn't seem to be "handling" it well if it was rendering my processor addled. I guess they took offense to the idea of a mere temple guard possessing an apparently supernatural trait when Sentinel Prime himself showed no evidence of such a thing.

It never went away though. Even now I knew that Optimus was near. I could tell where he was so long as he wasn't more than a couple dozen miles away. Just a few more minutes and my fellows would meet up with us at last. "Prime-dar" I sometimes called it in the privacy of my processor, but I had to rename it now. Not just because the human Henry Matthews had set it off, but because a fourth person registered on it too, now.

Sam Witwicky. Small, fragile, pale and motionless in my front seat. If I hadn't been there for it, I would have had trouble believing he's the same person as the one who destroyed a century-old organization's world view just by holding a speech.

He actually became a blip on my "magic" radar right after the S7 convoy was gassed to a stop last night, but with everything going on at the time (especially his panic attack which I will ensure Simmons pays dearly for) my odd-dar just didn't register as a priority. Once we reached Hoover Dam, though, and what happened in the ruined hangar so many hours later…

I still had no idea what it had been, even after scouring the whole Internet for references. Right now, I probably knew more about mysticism, mythology and things pertaining to reincarnation than any human alive, except those ascetic monks that supposedly live in this or that mountain range. But that _episode_ between Sam and whoever Henry was to him, whoever he'd been in his alleged past life… I couldn't find real matches for it. I was left with my personal impression, which I was having trouble including in my holoreport.

Normally I wouldn't even have to wonder about this dilemma, since my report should be annotated but complete visual and audio recordings of the events in question. But I was reluctant to do that in this case. It felt like I would be committing an unforgiveable betrayal of privacy. I didn't need a long explanation to know it had been a privilege to witness something so sacred. There was no other way to describe a union that ignited with the power of the sun. The older human's unconditional love had poured out in torrents. It had made my spark swell in its chamber, left it feeling lighter than it ever did.

How did you go about explaining to your commanding officer that you bore witness to an event that felt holier than the Allspark did? More than that, the light had registered on every electromagnetic wavelength we Autobots could perceive, and then some. Considering that our optics can see far beyond the mere rainbow distinguishable to human eyes…

It sounded only slightly less absurd than saying a small, fragile human could fight Megatron one-on-one to a standstill. But wait, that had just happened too! Having finally come to terms with the stupefaction of it all, I felt a large rush of relief and gratitude wash over me as it finally sank in: between all the successful hits and bringing the entire dam down on his head, Henry had probably eliminated Megatron's battle readiness advantage completely.

But my thought process switched to the metaphysical communion again soon enough. I mentally cursed my vocalizer's sorry state. I wanted to get Sam's input, or at least let him know, maybe give him the chance to place conditions on my sharing of the experience, but I couldn't. I'll just have to send everything to Optimus with an addendum to please not spread around what had occurred there. Then again, Prime would probably keep it under a lid anyway, mindful as he always is of everyone else's feelings, often at the cost of his own. Sam would likely have no qualms about the big boss knowing either.

Not the best consolation, but it would have to do.

My sensors picked up a change in Sam's vital signs just as he finally took a deep breath and pulled his head away, leaning back in the car seat. I saved the holoreport (after adding a second addendum to keep the supernatural details secret from the humans as well) and paid attention as he closed the file and slipped it back in the outer pocket of the Bag of Tricks. With visible effort, and after knitting his fingers with those of his provisional mate, the human was able to regain some of his composure.

Mikaela broke the tense silence. "Finally back with us, stud?"

Sam closed his eyes and smiled tiredly, before opening them again and glancing sideways at her. "Yeah. I'll hold for now."

"… So," the female hedged, trying to sound like she didn't care either way (and failing). "Any chance you'll tell us what that was back there?"

"…Not what," Sam finally replied after a minute. " _Who_." I read it in his eyes, the way his mind finally snapped back into that sharpened state that had cut down Simmons' entire system of beliefs. Sam reached forward to lay his free, left hand on my steering wheel, brushing the Autobot insignia in the middle with his thumb. It was an unexpected, affectionate gesture I wished I could return somehow. "Henry Matthews…" The boy murmured. "Sector Seven agent, part-time hermit, Seeker on the Road to Enlightenment and deep level undercover operative for The Ascended Brotherhood. Qualification: Adept…"

All of which told me absolutely nothing.

His hand fell to rest on his thigh as he sunk deeper into the back of the seat, inflexion leaving his voice completely, save for the tiniest trace of wry humor. "Archibald Amundsen Witwicky. My great-great grandfather reincarnated."

Utter shock ran through my spark. The man who had saved Sam, and through him _me_ , was his actual _family_. The same person who'd discovered Megatron in the first place, over a century ago. If I'd been in bipedal mode, I would have slapped myself. Henry had basically handed us his identity on a silver platter during his fight with Megatron, but I still needed it to be spelled out to me? At least it was clear that _he_ had turned Sam into the expression of human perfection he was now. And he proceeded to save both of us a second time, then shared himself with his descendant in a way that only the greatest of Spark Bonds could achieve, only for his life to be terminated minutes later while he was buying time for our escape.

Mikaela Banes didn't rein in her gasp of surprise, but she stayed otherwise silent. Appeared to understand the emotional implications almost as soon as I did. Horror and sympathy mixed in her expression as she made the connection. A family member and loving mentor gained and lost in the span of a single day.

Oh Sam…

It was then that my fellow Autobots finally caught up with us, or rather drove down the opposite lane and made turns that the vehicles they were disguised as would have had more than a bit of trouble pulling off under normal circumstances. Seeing a Peterbilt truck make a perfect U-turn left more than a few humans gaping. I could see them clearly with my long-range camera sensors before the large shape of my commanding officer cut into my line of sight. I easily fell into formation behind Jazz, who wheeled to position and let Ironhide take point. Ratchet, disguised as an ambulance, slid into place behind Optimus, right in front of the van Lennox was driving.

The comm link opened exactly when I expected it would. _:Bumblebee, report!:_

After a single nanosecond's worth of pondering, I edited out Henry's most relevant lines, tagged the holofile as "Prime's Optics Only" and sent the data burst using the best form of encryption we Autobots had at their disposal. Then I made a separate file containing the most recent five minutes and encrypted it just as tightly, before sending it to Optimus via a private channel instead of the command cloud.

I could feel Optimus' surprise at the unusual level of secrecy, the same way I knew he could feel my lingering stupefaction at what Sam had just disclosed.

That done, I returned the bulk of my attention to my passengers, knowing that Jazz would have long-range scans well in hand from here. I mentally cursed my defective voice box for the umpteenth time, but I couldn't let the heavy silence go on. _"You alright there, partner?"_ A horrible choice of a clip, but the best I could do under the circumstances.

Sam smiled sadly at my dashboard. "No, not really Bumblebee."

I felt the nearly overwhelming urge to track down Megatron personally and punch his lights out for what he'd done.

_:Are any of the humans in need of medical aid?"_

I almost strained my vocalizer trying to curse when Ratchet's voice chimed in my commlink. I had completely forgotten to bar command cloud access to the feed from my cabin sensors. Not caring what the others' reactions might be, I instantly terminated it. _:No.:_

 _:Whoa, lil'buddy, tha' was abrupt!:_ Jazz chimed in.

I didn't reply.

The next five minutes were spent fielding questions from everyone other than Prime. Fortunately, none of the others had met or even gotten wind of Henry Matthews, or about there being anything supernatural about the human race, so I didn't have to actively avoid any topics. Except to tell Ratchet that I still had no more clue than he did about how Sam's physiology had changed overnight. It wasn't even a lie. I _suspected_ Henry had done something, but I knew no more about the "how" than I did last night.

Tough. It was their own fault for dismissing Sam's answer of "divine Intervention" as a joke.

Given how Optimus didn't chide me for lying, neither openly or privately, I could only assume he could deduce my reasoning, or at least decided to play it safe with the information, for now.

"Archibald Amundsen Witwicky…" Sam murmured, oblivious to our radio exchange. Tilting his head as he gazed down at the brown bag between the front car seats. "And this is his Bag of Tricks." He blinked, and narrowed his eyes. "Or _mine_ now." Losing the last traces of emotional upheaval, he pulled the bag in his lap and began to rifle through it. I couldn't get very accurate readings of the insides for some reason, but I did catch a glimpse of some sort of gadgetry, the grapple gun Henry had mentioned, and at least one of those rod-shaped double rockets that worked against Megatron so well.

I probably should have expected the relative "peace" to be disturbed just then, as we reached the highway. An alarm sounded and nrought with it a flashing red light in my virtual HUD. It was followed by the whistling sounds of rockets flying through the air. Jazz' countermeasures, always engaged, sent out scrambling signals, causing the AI-guided missiles to veer off course. The road around us exploded upwards in showers of dust and bitumen, thankfully hitting no one.

At least not directly. Two civilian transports lost control and crashed along the edge of the suspended road we were on, much to our dismay. Three more followed in their wake, as the crashes caused a chain reaction.

 _:Blackout!:_ Ironhide snarled, identifying the helicopter taking potshots at us.

 _:How nice of'im ta drop by,"_ Jazz snarked. _:I got a virus with 'is name on it sittin' right'ere!:_

At Prime's order, we allowed the military vans accompanying us to take the lead, escorting me and the precious cargo ahead, while Ironhide and Jazz took position on our flanks, with Ratchet bringing up the rear. Optimus slowed down even further, and I didn't know whether or not to hope all three of our ground-based pursuers would stop to engage him. It was like choosing whether or not to consider Optimus' survival or the Allspark's safety as more important than the other.

Damned war.

When he was about thirty meters behind us, Optimus sharply swerved to the right, knocking Barricade (a police car? To Punish and Enslave? Really?) off kilter and sliding almost perpendicular to the road, only to transform mid-turn and meet Bonecrusher head on. The tan Decepticon lost the momentum and balance he'd gained on his roller blades and tumbled off the highway along with Optimus himself. They were a tangle of brown, red and blue plates as they fell out of sight, throwing sparks everywhere as they did.

Unfortunately, Blackout was still on us, following us by air. His second volley of missiles caused another string of accidents and forced me to take a sharp curve to the left to avoid a head-on collision with an out of control trailer. I ignored Mikaela's yell of alarm, and forcefully turned my mind away from the humans and the vehicles that went up in flames on every side of our bedraggled convoy.

An overhead bridge gave us some breathing space. The two human-manned vans had taken some superficial damage, and I and the others were mostly fine. Inside my cabin, the female slumped in momentary relief, while Sam intently studied the view shown through my rear-view side mirror. "Mikaela," he said lowly. "Hand me the Cube."

With some surprise, I realized the Allspark had tumbled off my backseat. I suppose the seatbelt wasn't enough after all. With some relief, I noticed that it hadn't given off any energy flares from the impact it must have suffered. The female quickly did as Sam asked her.

I had to divert my primary processes back to the situation outside though. Blackout peppered us with yet another volley of missiles, although this time he aimed for the civilians ahead of us. I could hear Ironhide snarl in rage through the command cloud. We had no choice but to evade the tumbling, flaming and falling vehicles as best we could. Later would be the time for mourning, assuming any of us lived through this. We had come out of things more or less intact so far, but that wouldn't last once Starscream and Megatron caught up with us.

I wasn't, for even a second, going to entertain the hope that Megatron would be unable to escape the water tides. The dam destruction had bought us time, but it had been years since I could trust a hope that we would just "get lucky" for once. If Jazz could hear me think, he'd probably say I almost sound like Optimus. But I often do, in my own head, regardless of how happy-go-lucky I am during quiet times.

We were just five minutes from the city when it happened. My sensors registered an Allspark emission in my cabin. A signal that was steadily rising. With more urgency than I'm used to, I pulled the background surveillance process to the foreground, and I almost didn't dodge a streak of rapid gunfire because of it.

Sam was rigid, holding the cube right in front of his face. Staring at it with such an intensity that I couldn't suppress a flash of concern. Concern that turned into alarm when the energy came to the fore, flowing through every etching in the artefact in flashes of blue intersped with white. A familiar chime thrummed through the air, and light started to flow out like mist, flowing around the boy's fingertips like strands of silk.

"Sam!" Mikaela yelled at the same time as me. My vocalizer sparked at my shout but I refused to hiss in pain.

The boy snapped out of his trance, jerking his head, wide-eyed as if waking up from a nightmare. The energy readings from the Allspark went out even more suddenly, leaving Sam gasping. I could feel his lungs struggling to take in air as his chest pressed against the seatbelt I held in place over him. But his grip on the cube only hardened, even as he strove to get himself under control once more.

"My God…" Sam breathed, sounding as if he was somewhere else. "Oh my God…"

What the hell was going on!?

"SAM!" Mikalea shook the boy by the shoulder and finally got him to return to us fully.

High-rate bullet fire clipped Ironhide's hood. Fed up with being on the defensive, the Thetacon decided to capitalize on the lead we'd gained on the ground-based 'Cons. He transformed, threw himself in a twisting, flipping dive and sent two cannon shots up and behind. The ion flare clipped Blackout's helicopter rotor, but the plasma bolt caught him right in the cockpit.

The troublesome enemy literally went down in flames.

"Eat that, fragging Deceptichump!"My mentor shouted before retaking his alt mode and catching up to the rest of us. I didn't show it, but I shared his enthusiasm. It probably wasn't a lethal hit, or even a severely crippling one, but it should let us lose him for now. And with Barricade having been knocked around by Optimus earlier, it should let us lose them in Mission City. Well, that would be the case if the human transport vans weren't such a big giveaway. Those miniguns on top weren't exactly subtle.

For the first thirty minutes, it seemed to go well. Our eclectic convoy of racecars and military pickup trucks raised a few eyebrows, but nothing major. The human soldiers were able to procure some short-range radios that would at least allow them to coordinate with the F22 Raptor Jet Fighters called by Keller to assist us. Sam and Mikaela had exited my cabin and I was trying to figure out the best route they could take the get themselves out of danger while we waited for Optimus to catch up to us.

I should have known better than to hope for the best.

It came out of nowhere. One moment we had regrouped on a street that was neither too wide nor too exposed, flanked by tall buildings on both sides, 20 stories tall or more. Then it was raining flame and metal. We only too late recognized the jet passing overhead as Starscream rather than the air support Keller had promised us. Ironhide and I transformed to our real selves, causing passersby to panic and start running away even without our shouted warnings. By the time the weapons specialist bellowed the identity of the Decepticon, the first volley of projectiles had made our human allies scatter, and the too many civilians around us panic. My audials did what they could to filter the blasts noises, to preserve my awareness of my surroundings and allow me to prioritize. But the humans behind me were screaming, and so many of them had died already on the way here. All the while we'd done nothing but run away, and diverted enemy fire which only ended up causing collateral damage and human casualties instead. However tactically sound it had all been, it left a wretched feeling in my spark chamber.

Starscream was just completing his aerial turn. I could see him in the distance. I knew what he was going to do, and what it would likely mean for the ones behind me if I dodged, so I jumped at an old, decrepit truck that happened to be nearby. With my whole strength, I began to lift it up by the rear, to turn it into a makeshift barricade between myself and the missiles that were already screaming through the air towards our position. I was staring death in the face, literally, but there wasn't much cover to be had anyway, and there was no way in the Pit I'd let Sam precede me in death.

I was expecting Ironhide to radio some sort of reprimand or order to get to safety. I'd even considered pulling out of the shared encrypted comm channel just to avoid it.

Instead, he appeared at my side and helped me hoist the vehicle properly. I'm glad he had such firm servos and physical strength so far above mine, because I almost dropped the truck from the shock.

Two missiles missed – Jazz was well at work hacking their homing systems even then – but the third hit its mark. It exploded violently at point blank range, turning the whole trailer into thunderous, fiery shrapnel. The shockwave sent both me and Ironhide hurtling helm over skid. I barely heard him grunt and growl in pained anger as he smashed into a store front. An even smaller part of my processor was amazed I had even a shred of attention left to devote to him in my own condition.

My lower body felt like it had fallen into a volcano. Fuel lines hissed as they leaked. Valves clamped on them to stem the flow, to prevent further fuel from being lost. But I didn't really register them engaging through the haze of the sensory overload, or my blue Energon splattered across the entire block. Pain receptors deactivated in droves as my battle software went nuclear on them, but that did little besides finally allow me to take stock of how badly I'd been damaged. Left arm weapon systems thrashed beyond use, my transformation cog had been dislodged, one doorwing had been torn right off, and there was even a bent backstrut somewhere, screaming at me in binary.

I pulled my main processing threads together and bullheadedly smashed through the pain, trying to push myself to stand using my still functional right arm, but that only made me roll over. Through the flare of agony, my hiss of frustration came out as a long, warbling groan instead. I tried to stand again, only to finally realize what the real issue was. From the knee and ankle both my legs were _gone_.

As if waiting for the acknowledgement, the data from the pain receptors and diagnostic systems slammed into my processor so suddenly that I almost went into stasis lock. I barely plowed through it through sheer desperation. My mind had been reduced to a one-track thing that alternated from one though to another. That I couldn't offline when the Allspark was still in my care, and that I had to make sure Sam was still alive out there somewhere. "Sam…" I didn't even realize I was calling out his name, or trying. But if I could make sure he was still alive, then at least I could go knowing my last act had made a difference. "Sam… where are you?" And still my voice box produced an inarticulate amalgam of buzzing crackles instead of anything intelligible.

Relief came in the form of my every single internal diagnostic system and pain receptor shutting down all at once, brought to heel by the medical overrides Ratchet had programmed into all of our subroutines. My whole body, or what was left of it, shuddered, and my processor had to take a moment to confirm that it really wasn't being pulled in every direction anymore. With some difficulty, I reassigned whatever resources I still had access to. Comm channels came online first, bringing me Ironhide's almost frantic voice, calling my name again and again. I tiredly pinged him back, not coherent enough to compose a message. Sound, smell and hearing sensors came back online next, and my once again functional optics settled on Sam's form, kneeling right in front of me, wide-eyed and horrified.

My voice box crackled, as usual, but _dammit!_ "Sam…" For once, I managed to say his name properly.

He reached out, laying his hand on my helm as I lay broken and defeated. It made my spark swell with a rush of affection I never really expected to feel for anyone besides my fellow Autobots.

Starscream had disappeared off somewhere, but a tank rolled out of nowhere, squishing whole cars and sending humans fleeing everywhere. The human soldiers hunkered down behind the debris the seeker bot had left behind, and not every piece of upturned street was thick enough to stop the cannon blasts that Brawl kept sending our way.

Sam glared in the tank's direction and kept urging me to crawl to safety, always backing up and pleading for me to follow. Ratchet had yet again broken his medic's oath to preserve all life by taking cover next to the remains of the truck and shooting back at the 'con, buying me time.

"Come on, 'Bee! Move it!" By Primus, the boy was ordering me around, the little sneak. "I'm not gonna leave you until Mikaela's ready to tow you out of here!" I suddenly had to smother the absurd urge to laugh. They had it all figured out already, didn't they? I diverted the impulse towards my lower hydraulics and pulled off one, good heave, finally getting me behind the largest pile of wreckage covering what used to be an urban intersection.

The boy all but collapsed against my helm, laying a hand on my face plate. It was such a shame my sense of touch had been disengaged, as I couldn't really bask in the gesture like I would have wanted. Maybe it was for the best. The boy would probably want no more to do with us after this was over, if he survived intact where I couldn't.

I couldn't see much of anything anymore, but I was still connected to the command cloud, so I could access the live feeds of everyone else's optics. Jazz had disappeared somewhere earlier, but now he came screeching from around the bend across the neighborhood from the Decepti-tank. He dodged around every bit of relevant debris with expert precision, transformed mid-turn, catapulting himself over the large steel, concrete-covered girder lying sideways across the street. He twisted in mid-jump, used a servo to add to his momentum and brought his ion pistol out of subspace just in time to shoot Brawl's next cannon shot right as it blasted out of the barrel. This time, the bastard on the other side of the fence was treated to a point-blank explosion. By the time the fire and smoke cleared, Jazz had jumped on top of the enemy and began to harass him as only he knew.

It was the opening that Ratchet and Ironhide needed. They entered their altmodes and shot down the street, such as it was. Several erratic gun blasts were easily enough avoided. I was torn between awe and exasperation when Ironhide decided to try and top Jazz' feat of agility, flipping overhead three times, once even shooting both cannons at the street to give himself extra momentum. Finally, Brawl transformed and managed to throw Jazz aside, but by then he'd already been engaged by the other two. His servo fell to Ratchets razor saw, and it just went downhill for him from there, especially when the human soldiers finally closed in and began to pepper him with concentrated sabot rounds and grenade launchers.

By then, Sam had crawled to the edge of our cover. He was just in time to see the end of the bout.

Then Starscream flew overhead again, lower than the tallest city buildings, and a second flier, a distinctive cybertronian jet cut through the skies in his wake.

"Shit," Sam cursed, looking grimly at the smoke trails produced by the two figures. The eyes he turned on me afterwards were at once resigned and determined.

Unclipping the Cube from my hip plate, I all but pushed it into his arms, net and all, silently transmitting what I could of my shame just by looking at him. As much as we hated to admit it, we Autobots were too obvious as targets, and with fliers the enemy had the advantage. Our only chance was to draw their fire while a human ran or snuck past the Decepticons and delivered the Cube to the pre-arranged aerial pickup point several blocks away. I hated that I had to ask Sam to do it, but I also doubted anyone else would succeed in the endeavor. Lennox and his men might have what it takes, but their outfits were only slightly less obvious than our large frames, and their role was the same as ours.

Sam accepted it with only a moment's hesitation and manipulated the loose end of the cable with unexpected dexterity. In less than a minute had had put a brace together and hung the cube at his across the chest, with a second loop going around his waist for stability. The cable formed an asymmetrical X with the strap of the Bag of Tricks he wore on his back.

The tow truck Mikaela Banes had hotwired into submission earlier drove to a halt right next to me. The female hurried to get out and opened her mouth to say something but I never got to find out what.

Sam closed in and proceeded to kiss the living dailights out of her. My optic shutters were as wide as I'd ever had them as I stared at the unexpected but absolutely appropriate sight, soot and all. Several meters away, William Lennox had practically stumbled to a halt and was staring at the unexpected spectacle with an expression reminiscent of a fish out of water.

Sam broke away suddenly, but not abruptly enough to snap Mikaela out of the daze she had fallen into. Looking as if nothing unusual had occurred, the boy then made his way to Lennox as got right to the point. "So, aerial pickup point. That building, right?" He pointed in the appropriate direction.

The major stared at him. "Yeah…"

Sam nodded sagely and held out a hand. "Flare?"

Lennox blinked and passed him the requested object, which Sam quickly stuffed inside the Bag of Tricks. That done, he eyed the Major squarely and gave a two-fingered salute before charging off to perform the task I essentially forced upon him.

To his credit, Lennox started barking orders to his men immediately, and he even managed to reboot Mikaela's brain. "Get that two truck out of here now!"

The female snapped out of it and quickly set about dragging my useless frame to relative safety, even as my battle brothers charged ahead, dodging when they could and taking the brunt of the enemy assault when they couldn't. Through it all, they fired their advanced energy guns at the enemy, wherever they found them. Human soldiers made their way through the chaos, pushing back at their planet's invaders with their ballistics. Optimus, finally back among us, latched onto Megatron's flying form, even as Starscram tangled with the airforce high overhead.

In the middle of the calamitous battleground, Sam ran.

Some guardian I turned out to be, towed away like a useless wreck. Primus above, what the Pit was I doing? What else could I do? There had to be something.

The answer came scant minutes later, and once again it was a human that delivered it. Mikaela brought the truck to a halt in a tight, dusty alley, well out of sight. I gazed down at her over my shoulder from behind the cabin. She was hunched over the steering wheel much like Sam had been over mine, not long ago. It was hard for her to rein in her tears, but she did it eventually. When she had composed herself, she turned to me, her eyes a chaotic mix of emotions. It was obvious that her thoughts mirrored my own.

I raised my right arm and powered the plasma gun, the single part of my weapons systems still operational.

Seconds later, her foot hit the acceleration, only instead of the forward the car charged back the way we'd come.

That would have been the end of it, one last glorious but foolhardy charge, if not for the message that Ironhide all but shouted all through the command cloud right as we burst out from our hiding place.

I allowed myself a moment of disbelief before I felt like my spark had been dumped in a vat of liquid nitrogen. For the first time in my life when holding any sort of serious conversation with Ironhide, I forgot all about protocol or simple politeness and all but yelled right back. _:What the frag do you mean Sam's gone!?"_


	8. Baptism by Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam acts on something he saw before exiting the "car" and does some really crazy things while running away from the consequences. Then his headache gets too bad to ignore, making everything that followed twice as agonizing as it had to be.

The world was noisy. Every blast and yell drowned out my footfalls, and every bellow sheared my eardrums, despite how my blood throbbed in my temples.

But I could probably make a good case for it not being noisy _enough_. Despite how Lennox and the other soldiers were making a racket every time they fired those guns of theirs. Despite how they kept shouting back and forth. Despite the normal people running away everywhere, despite how every time something or somebot crashed into something behind me. It all registered perfectly clearly to my senses, instead of the chaotic, awareness-shattering mess it should have been. The noise wasn't as bad as the way my chest clenched every time someone bellowed or something exploded.

I wished I could at least pretend not to know whether it was mine or their people hurting and dying, but I couldn't. Not when I could understand every word, every shout human and mechan both. Not when all our enemies were ahead and I was running _straight for them_.

God, Simmons was right! I was _crazy_. Fucking _crazy!_

My mad dash was abruptly curbed when the Decepticon opened fire, forcing me to throw myself out of the way. Two missiles screamed overhead and a third rocket exploded against the pavement just a few meters in front of me. I landed on my side (making sure to _not_ allow the Cube to hit anything) as the attacks were answered by Ironhide less than a moment later. Two cannon flashes scorched the air above me, one blue and one yellow. They slammed into Blackout and made him stumble backwards with pained, metallic grunts, but the bastard didn't go down.

"Take cover, take COVER!" The black mech shouted as he _vaulted_ over me. He finished with a roll, picked up a car as he came to a crouch and sped to his feet, holding it between himself and the rocket that would have hit me directly. The explosion was enough to launch Ironhide off his feet, but even then he struggled to fall away from me. Blackout's follow-up never came because Ratchet started peppering him with suppressive fire. Holy hell, the medic had modified the cutting laser he used for repairs to work like a rapid-fire assault rifle.

All around us, civilians still panicked and fled, even as the sounds of battle _behind_ me never seemed to lighten. Blackout started to take his frustration out on them. Instead of a left hand, he had the smaller rotor of the helicopter. The thing spun and cut a car in half as he wavered. It cut _right though._

Without even getting up, Ironhide growled and took aim. I heard the cannons charge with a whistling hum. The weapons glowed blue and orange, then both of them released their pent up charge. They hit, one in the helm and one in the hip joint. Blackout fell backwards in a storm of flames and wind shear, but was able to stumble away from further punishment by retreating around the bend of the upcoming intersection.

Ratchet hastened to cut ahead of me, but Ironhide pushed himself up and whirled around, charging his guns yet again and firing at the devil tank that was still battling the Rangers and S7 operatives less than a hundred meters back. And here I'd thought he'd died. Fat chance of that. He'd only been playing dead earlier. As the mass of noise rose in volume once more, I pulled myself together.

"Sam!" I was already on my feet when Ironhide turned to me. "Get to the building! We'll protect you."

I took off again, even though I knew what was coming. Just like I'd known how the fight so far would go, since before I even stepped out of Bumblebe when we finally reached Mission City an hour ago. The pressure in my head hadn't decreased at all from that damned moment when Mikaela passed me the Cube on the way to the city. The moment when I really _looked_ at the Allspark for the first time. If anything, the feeling at the center of my skull was steadily getting harder to push aside as I dashed down the street as fast as my feet could take me. I tried to focus on Ironhide's and Ratchets's stomps as they ran alongside me, but the noise canceling technology in their axles ruined it, since they didn't even approach the shout barrier. Their rifle, cannon and missile fire were a little easier to latch onto, as were their shouts and curses. But they were _taking hits for me_ , so it only made me feel worse, and they didn't work to drown out the growing weight on my mind anyway.

The pressure was alarming. The Allspark was trying to do something to my head. It was trying to do something and felt completely and utterly _wrong_.

Back in the car, when Mikaela passed me the Cube, it was like a cloud began to encroach on my mind. I don't know why nothing happened when I handled it before, but I wish it didn't happen at all. It felt foreign, uncomfortable and invasive. It made me look at the Cube, _really_ look at it, until I saw the fate threads. There were hundreds of them, each one made of interlocking cyberglyphics. They shone as they glided unseen to all eyes but mine, and they were so fascinating that I realized too late that they had nothing to do with what the Cube was trying to put my brain through.

It figured that the Allspark would be directly connected to _all_ transformers in that way. If anything existed that had a direct stake in each and every one of their lives, the Cube was _it_.

I remembered exactly how Henry showed me Ironhide's arrival to the planet, just like I remembered everything else. Back in the car, I'd barely even thought of doing something similar when the threads of words began to weave together before my eyes. Next thing I knew, I was seeing giant robots, people running, mechs shooting each other down, alien jets blasting F22s out of the sky. Buildings were in flames, cement and steel beams torn asunder, Megatron was flying as a jet straight through a skyscraper with Optimus latching on.

But that had come late in the vision (holy cow, I was already _seeing things_ ), well after the sight of Bumblebee crippled, and before one other scene, the last I saw before Mikaela's panicked shout pulled me out. That was when I realized that the Cube had already started to do something to me, and I couldn't tell what it was, or even start to figure out how to make it stop. Whatever I was doing, it was a stalling measure at best. Maybe it would stop when the Cube was finally taken away from me, but I wasn't even sure if that would be for the best, especially if the Allspark were to just switch targets to the new carrier who, unlike me, would likely be totally unaware of it.

I jerked my head, shoving the concern away since I had something else to worry about. Something that was a lot more urgent and likely to get me reduced to a rapidly-drying smear on the pavement. God, I wish Henry was still here. He'd have known what was going on. He would've been able to tell me whether my insane idea was worth it or not. But he wasn't, and the farther I ran through the parts of town that people hadn't managed to evacuate, the less time I had to change my mind. Any moment now, an F22 would show up out of nowhere, descend ahead of me and reconfigure, and the possibilities would _disappear._

Starscream's feet, pedes, whatever mechs called them, met the road with a screech, throwing dust and sparks everywhere. The seekerbot disdainfully hurled cars out of his path and sneered at the running townsfolk all around. A family van (with a family of four still in it, I noticed sadly) landed roof-down on top of a woman at the corner of the crossroad, knocking over a streetlight as it did. The Decepticon didn't even bother saying anything, just aimed his missile launcher in my general direction and fired, sending another volley of rockets from his shoulder-mounted launcher just an instant later.

I glared at the mech and the world slowed down. Lights, smoke, colors, dust and distance estimations flitted through my brain all at once. The first two rockets were hurtling almost angrily through the air, and they would fly above me, to strike Ironhide who was just behind and to my right. The Autobot would manage to fire back and sent Starscream reeling, but would be tossed around by the hit the same moment. Ratchet would shoot his custom rifle and hunker down to take cover behind a mail van to avoid the worst of the shells that Starscream's scatter blaster had just released. While that happened, cars would screech to a halt all around us, one coming straight for me and forcing me to do the same. I would narrowly miss being run over by a Mazda Bongo that would disappear in a fiery explosion shortly after.

I would be given just barely enough time to throw myself to the ground and hide between a cab and a Sedan, and I wouldn't be able to prevent the Cube from hitting the asphalt _hard_. All I had to do was the _sane_ thing, stagger to a stop and change directions as fast as I could.

All I had to do was the _sane_ thing, and everything would happen exactly as I'd seen it in when I inadvertently scryed the near future.

Maybe if I'd held out longer during the vision I could have found out if this whole fight ended in our favor, but I hadn't. And the fact was that if Henry hadn't stalled Megatron and brought Hoover Dam down on his head, the 'Con leader would have long since caught up with us, and the outcome I could still change would have happened before I even got started down the street.

So despite how I could still do the _sane_ thing and get the fuck out of the way, I shot _forward,_ faster than ever, and _jumped_.

One foot landed on the Mazda's nose, the second struck the windshield as I ran over the entire thing. The driver (a none too bad-looking woman as fate had it) gave me a startled look even through her terror, but I ignored it. I was already on the car's top, just a few meters away from the rocket that was about to blow us sky high, so I bent my knees and _dove_ , never changing direction.

My leap carried me forward and I twisted in the air, even as the missile shot underneath me, missing me by half a foot. It exploded the moment its nose met the hood of the large van, rendering the world hot, loud and _blinding_ to the point where I had to shut my eyes and grit my teeth against the cacophony and flash. I felt shrapnel and flames nick at my back and legs, fire that reached higher and concealed me from the world completely, but the worst of it missed or was stopped by my backpack.

I hit the next car's roof with my left shoulder, then the rest of me followed. I gasped a choked shout of pain that went unheard over the crashes and explosions that had yet to finish. But the joint had only been jarred, not dislocated, and it was the side opposite the one I had the Allspark strapped to, so no energy surges came. Miraculously still mentally coherent despite the adrenaline and the voice of reason crying in the corner, I scrambled, rolled off the car and ran for the nearest building entrance I could see, ducking around a mail truck just in time to avoid the worst of the detonations that came as a result of Starscream's second volley.

Not a second after, the flier was hit by two orbs of energy, one rocket and half a dozen laser bolts. That was my cue. With the street still on fire and the transformers distracted, I sprinted from cover to cover until I managed to dive through the closest window without anyone relevant seeing me. Even then I didn't stop for a breather, even though my lungs were burning, even though my clothes, dust and soot were sticking to my skin because of the sweat. I looked around from where I was hiding behind the tall counter of the post office and my eyes zeroed in on the employee access hallway. Not bothering to think twice about it, I ran straight for it, kicking the door open and proceeding to make for the rear exit. From there, there would be only a few blocks until a certain building located in a completely different direction than the one I was supposed to be heading for.

Guilt rose in my throat as Ratchet and Ironhide started to call my name in the fading distance, unable to find me, but I did what I could to force it down. Dodging people, running and skulking through streets and alleys, I distracted myself by making a list of injuries.

They were surprisingly few. A stretched muscle here, a jarred but still useable shoulder there. Even the explosion I'd "braved" had left me with minor burns, cuts and scrapes on my legs and the backs of my arms. It confirmed another suspicion that was growing in my mind. If it was just one or two weird things, I might have let it lie, but they were piling up fast. Autobots somehow didn't crash on top of humans when they were blasted around, the 'Cons attacks seemed to miss more often than not while ours didn't, Jazz's missile-scrambling countermeasures worked every time instead of on and off.

Most unbelievably, I barely got hurt when I made that suicidal charge in what I knew would become a field of steel and fire. The only conclusion I could draw from all that was that someone or something was actively manipulating probabilities in our favor, basically granting us the most absurd example of good luck.

My world view and thought processes were a weird place these days.

Unfortunately, for once my dry humor failed to return any semblance of calm to my mind. I had to stop in a narrow, dark side-street, lean my forehead against the moldy wall and try to regain some of the determination I'd dredged up right before I almost got myself blown up. I breathed in as deep as I could, again and again, despite the stench coming from the dumpster I was hiding behind. Reaching to my chest, I grabbed the strap of the Bag of Tricks, drawing whatever comfort from it I could.

I was about to put myself in a situation when even the most absurd good luck wouldn't be enough to get me out, but I was too close to back down. And if I hesitated, I would be too late to do anything anyway. With a final steadying breath, I pushed myself from the wall and, once again surprised at the good shape Henry had left me in, jumped almost one and a half meters in the air, just enough to grab onto the iron ladder and, from there, properly get onto the fire escape. Twenty-five stories I'd have to climb this way, but I wasn't going to risk trusting an elevator.

Once again, I ran. Ran and hoped I would reach the top of the building before a certain someone else landed from their flight on the top of the skyscraper located on the opposite corner of the adjoining intersection. I leapt up the stairs, two at a time, one hand on the railing and the other steadying the Cube at my hip. I deliberately focused my mind on coming up with ways to use the things in by backpack, just so I didn't start to really worry about the way the pressure on my mind started to flicker and change to weird ripples and back again.

Finally, I was at the top. I was gasping and felt hot, and my lungs didn't seem to be able to pull enough air inside despite how good they were compared to those of everyone else. But I'd done it. I was on the roof, and I saw that it was good.

Despite the burning in my lungs, I hastened to the far side of the rooftop and dropped to hide by the concrete ledge, mourning the loss of the breeze on my face. Unzipping the Bag of Tricks, I started to take things out, some whole, some in need of assembly, but all of them ready to be put to use. My breathing gradually evened out as I went through the motions.

So of _course_ it would be at that very moment that an alien would fly over that part of the city. I hunkered down, making myself as invisible as possible but my expectations were met for once. The head 'Con didn't come high or close enough to see me. I risked looking over the ledge, and I was just in time to get a perfect look at how Megatron slammed Jazz back-first on top of the clock tower sticking out of the corner of the apartment building up ahead.

"Come here, little cretin!" the grey mech rumbled as he stomped on the much smaller mech, then grabbed him by an ankle.

Hanging upside-down, Jazz started shooting Megatron's legs with his blaster, but it barely fazed him and I'd seen enough. Jumping to my feet, I put a few feet's distance between me and the building's edge, just so I had enough room to gain momentum and _throw_. As Henry's unexpected invention left my hand, I grimly thought that it was a good thing my old man had made me play horseshoes, because calculating the flight path of a boomerang was far, _far_ easier.

"You want a piece of me?!" Jazz snarled, defiant to the end and every bit as oblivious of me as Megatron was. "You want a piece!?"

"No!" Large claws grabbed the small frame by the feet and the throat, ready to tear. "I want tw-" The boomerang speared him through the wrist. Long, sharp spikes had grown from both ends mid-flight, sharp enough to cut through armor where there was no weakness to slip through. Neither mech had any time to understand what had just happened before the thing exploded violently, breaking Megatron's hold.

But I hadn't been standing around. The moment the boomerang bomb left my hand, I went with the motion, spinning and crouching low, fingers curling around the handle of the single conventional weapon that Henry had left me. By the time Megatron had recovered from the explosive surprise, I was already turning around, putting the large, smug bastard face to face with the barrel of an RG-6 grenade launcher.

The weapon barely made any noise as it fired, or so it seemed to my ears after the chaotic racket I'd fled from not that much earlier. Or maybe it was my adrenaline-fueled scream drowning it out. My aim was terrible, since this was the first time I fired one of these things, and the 'Con was pretty far off. But my next two grenades actually hit him, exploding with force and fire. The bastard managed to bring his arm to shield himself – I was glad he didn't think to throw Jazz in the way, since he still had him held in his other servo – but I kept up, shooting two more, one of which actually got through and blasted his neck plates.

Megatron yelled and fired back with his plasma cannon – oh God, he'd brought it out _fast –_ But I expected he would. It was why I'd laid out my gear several feet away from where I was. I leapt aside, falling into a roll (my rational mind, or what was left of it, was trying to get my attention but I was busy staying alive) and came to my knees before my goal. My finger tapped a rune on a certain rod, which I grabbed by one end and hurled, with all my might, straight up as I shot to stand once more, before I again opened fire.

Then I watched, and couldn't believe my luck. Whether or not it was due to whatever was messing with probabilities, the first grenade hadn't been a total waste after all. It must have passed through the clock face window of the tower under the mech's feet and blown up against some support or other. Because my last shot had just done the same. Megatron, Leader of the Decepticons, tumbled and lost his balance as the decrepit clocktower began to crumble beneath his feet.

It was the opening Jazz needed. The Autobot managed to find a spot under the torso where all Transformers seemed to have weaker armor. His bayonet scraped through, cutting through circuits and making Megatron arch in surprised pain. Then the trigger was squeezed.

With a final bellow, the red-eyed creature lost hold of his prey at last. Jazz fell through the air to the street below while Megatron scrambled to keep his balance, only to fail. He made sure to shout his rage, even as he drove his claws into the sides of the walls still stable, but he recovered quickly. Glaring at me over his shoulder, he used his feet to hurl himself away from the crumbling building. His jet wings extended instantly, then he was airborne.

He couldn't come straight for me. I was higher up and too close for him to maneuver properly, so he circled the building and gained height first, prepared to come at me from behind. It would have given me enough time to make a run for it, but there was little chance of me reaching the stairs, especially since they were the same direction he was coming from. And if I did reach them before he reached me, he'd easily blow his way to me and kill me, getting the Cube and everything. So instead I pushed aside the increasingly tempting prospect of gibbering in terror and only took a few steps towards the rooftop center, tracking his flight path. All the while, I kept my grenade launcher aimed at him as well as I could. Technically, there was no point in doing it, since it was empty, but Henry had added to it a totally superfluous and useless _laser scope_.

When it happened, it all came together ridiculously well. Megatron was ten meters away from the building top I was on. He retracted his jet wings and was planting his feet forward, ready to land and tear me a new one, when two laser-guided rockets that had earlier been a single rod came flying down from above. One that was highly explosive struck him in the face, and the other filled with liquid nitrogen followed in its sibling's path, freezing his helm and scrambling his entire sensory systems, even rendering his optics temporarily blind.

There was only one problem: his momentum hadn't changed. And instead of landing and posturing, he bellowed and crashed bodily, uncontrollably in a stone-shattering roll that was headed right for me.

"Well _shit_."

I tossed the grenade launcher aside, turned on my heel and ran like hell, only slowing down to bend over and snatch up the last thing I'd earlier taken out of the Bag of Tricks. It was all I could to do reach the end of the building before Megatron's struggling, sliding, smoking frame smashed into me. But I did it, I jumped on the ledge, crouched and gathered myself, then put all my strength in one, mighty leap of faith.

Fucking _crazy_. I believe I mentioned this.

The world was below me and it looked fascinatingly messed up, though I was sure the debris, sparks and smoke raining above me was an even worse sight. I didn't get to contemplate it for long though, because I got a real life lesson in why not very many people have what it takes to wield a grapple gun. You see, there's a reason climbers and SWAT teams pass the cord underneath their behinds when they rope down a cliff or building. Holding onto it with your hands alone is hard as hell. And if you do something stupid like _jump off a building_ _**before**_ you fire the damn thing, you're liable to get your arms dislocated or torn off, assuming your fingers are even strong enough to stay curled around the handle of the thing.

I managed it somehow. Barely. The grapple hook shot from the gun with a snickt and snagged firmly onto the ledge of the building across the street, the block right next to the one Megatron had been on not long ago. My muscles strained under my weight, and the added momentum of the freefall I'd been in moments before, but I grit my teeth and bore it. I had bigger problems, namely the rapidly approaching wall and the second realization that no, grapple hooks could not, in fact, extend indefinitely so I'd better hope I didn't end up dangling hopelessly several floors above ground.

This time, I was sure it was only because of the absurd wave of luck that I didn't hit concrete. Instead, I crashed through a window into someone's apartment. The glass shattered around me and hit everything in sight, and even the best luck in the world couldn't protect me from every gash or bruise that this was bound to inflict on my body. With a pained groan, I rolled to my back, which only made me fall off the bed I'd ended up on. Unfortunatey, the fading dizziness let me hear the distinct sound of an energy flare, and the shears and clangs of a cybernetic transformation.

I slowly got to my feet and felt for the cube. It was still there, but it had finally happened. Allspark energy had been released upon impact with the wall or floor, I wasn't sure which. I just knew it had happened, given the changes inflicted on the former computer that now stood on the desk. It barely became aware before its optic-less "face" focused on me and it lunged.

I met it with a pillow to the face, then grabbed it by a leg when it was off balance and threw it out the window.

A stupid drone was going to intimidate me after what I'd just gone through. Yeah, that'll happen. Especially after I gave myself perfect evidence that even Megatron wasn't as big a danger to my life as my own insanity.

I was ready to find my way out of there when I doubled over in pain. Somehow, I fought through it without collapsing, but everything hurt in some measure or other. It was ironic that the injury which bled the most was a long gash on the outer part of my forearm. I tore the sleeve right off. Muttering an apology in my head, I snatched a tan shirt that someone had thrown on the bed at some point in the past and tore a strip of fabric out of it, improvising a bandage. I could have used the actual bandages in my backpack (Henry had included be basic first aid supplies) but I was in too much of a hurry to stop for that. Within minutes I was running down the main flight of stairs, biting on one end of the dressing as I tied the knot with the other.

I only slowed down when I neared the exit, in order to look warily around for 'Cons. Megatron would have no doubt recovered by now. As "amazing" as my actions had just been, they were nothing compared to what Henry had pulled off. I suppose I'd have to live through today if I had any hope of ever living up to the bar he set. Especially since it was only because of the stuff he left me that I managed this much at all.

I just hoped the way I left Ironhide and Ratchet in the dust didn't lead to one of them dying in Jazz's stead. Some would start to natter about balance of life and death and how I would have to expect something like that to happen, but I called bullshit.

People were running and yelling, nothing new there, but they all seemed to be heading the same way, so I used that to deduce where the main mess was. Even though it would be useless against robots, I pulled the handgun out of the bag, since it was the last weapon I had. I'd almost put together a plan to sneak around and get to some other high building and pop the flare to call aerial pickup, but I had to drop my great ideas again when the panicking people started to yell and run every which way.

Looking up, I saw why. "I'll get you, boy!" Megatron howled from the top of the opposite block. "I know you have my Cube! I can sense it no matter where you run!"

He jumped and began to slide down the wall, one clawed servo gouging deep trenches in the mortar and steel supports.

Oh God, I was so _dead._ "Shit shit shit shit shit!" Was my new chant. I made my way out and took off running the opposite direction as fast as I could while avoiding screaming people. I turned a corner and cut through an alley, and when I was about to come out the other side, I threw myself against the wall and held out my useless gun when I heard wheels and the sound of a motor.

Sheer relief washed over me when a familiar Pontiac Solstice made a 180-degree turn and screeched to a halt right in front of me, side door already open. Without a second thought, I jumped and strapped myself in. Jazz was already halfway down the street when I finally had the seat belt settled over me properly. When I was done, I slumped and released a long sigh, but my adrenaline didn't start to drain in the slightest. Not when I could still hear echoes of Megatron raving and clawing at everything in sight while looking for me.

"Lil' buddy, you saved mah aft back there," Jazz said. His voice sounded odd but earnest and came from somewhere in the dashboard. "Guess that'll teach me ta try an' play big defender. Ah'll leave it ta Ironhide next time."

"How is everyone else?" Hopefully better than me. I ached all over and the feeling in my head had gotten worse.

"Sam, you scared the spark outta everybody," Jazz answered with a seriousness that made me pause, though his speed only increased, no matter how many tight turns he took. "You should hear'em in the comm' cloud. Bumblebee's been tearin' Ironhide a new skidplate fer losin' track o' ya, and Ratchet hasn' stopped cussing in breems."

Sam winced. "Can you tell them sorry for me?"

"Here, ah'll run a translator so you can do it yerself. They're so distracted that they're totally ignorin' mah live feed." As soon as he said that, the radio, or whatever it was, sprung to life with a burst of static, settling into a voice I didn't immediately recognize because I'd only ever heard it a few times, and each time it was in short, scratchy bursts. "- the frag could he just disappear?! You've got scanners that can see through anything!"

I was stunned by how angry and desperate Bumblebee sounded, even as I wondered how many regulations or unspoken rules Jazz had just broken by letting me in on this conversation. Conversation which was probably advancing far more quickly in Mechan than the translated feed I was getting, and which Jazz didn't seem inclined to stop despite that he could have reassured everyone ten times over by now. He was enjoying the chaos I'd sown, the bastard.

"He must've hidden somewhere while we were distracted by Starscream," Ironhide grunted. I had to say that it was amazing how they could have flowing conversations in this cloud of theirs while they were no doubt trading gun blasts and blows out in the real world. "He was right in the middle of that explosion-"

"Explosion!?" Bumblebee balked.

"-but the Cube isn't anywhere nearby, and there were no discharges either! He ain't here!"

"Explosion!? EXPLOSION!?"

Could Decepticons hack into this feed, I wondered. They'd probably die of laughter or bafflement and we'd win the day.

Ratchet's voice cut in, totally ignoring the yellow bot's growing hysterics. "If he isn't dead, the boy must be injured and hiding, but I can't locate him." He sounded frustrated. "Little glitch better not have ran off on his own out of some desire to make sure that 'no one takes the fall but him' because when I find him there'll be Pit to pay!"

I cringed, because he'd almost hit the nail on the head. I hadn't run off to "sacrifice myself" or anything, but I did do it to save Jazz. The other half of my mind felt touched that no one seemed to even conceive the notion that I may have just run away out of cowardice. I suppose I should say something like "I'm fine" or variation thereof, but I didn't want to suffer through the rightful scolding I'd get. Not that I really thought my alternative would spare me the fully deserved lecture, but the horseshoes game had made it clear that you never knew until you tried.

Besides, this was _important_. "Guys, how the hell can Megatron sense the Allspark when Optimus can't?"

There was a beat of dead silence, then three voices exploded all at once, mixing into a single, unintelligible burst that left me as nonplussed as I'd ever been. Then Bumblebee got a word in (I could almost imagine him shoving everyone aside in the virtual space) but it didn't last long. Soon, everyone was shooting questions or hurling not-necessarily-fond expletives my way, making it clear that my measly attempt to distract them with my initial question had completely and utterly failed.

Throughout it all, Jazz laughed.

"-. .-"

We almost made it. Key word being almost.

I wonder how many times I'll repeat those words, how many times I'll aim for the best outcome and fall short. At least it hadn't happened with Jazz and Megatron this time.

He and I were well on our way to rejoining the others. At one point, Optimus himself had actually chimed in to finally answer my question. Well, sort of. All he could say was that there were some theories but they themselves had never figured out how Megatron could sense the Allspark as he did. It was frustrating and made no sense. If Optimus, a _Prime_ , didn't have such a connection to the Cube, why did Megatron? He didn't even need a special scanner, for Pete's sake, and the ones that existed were few, and only got readings when the Cube released a flare for whatever reason. And they could never pinpoint it with very good accuracy.

Optimus had to initiate radio silence on his end when he finally engaged Megatron full-out. I was worried, but I could barely focus on the feeling due to how my brain was feeling as though fire ants were crawling all over it. It made me want to snarl, I even considered asking someone else to get the Allspark to safety, but for better or worse I soon had an all too real external threat to think about instead.

Just when we were several blocks away from the spot where Ironhide and Ratchet were holding the fort against Brawl and Blackout amidst Starscream's potshots, an all too familiar police car emerged from around the upcoming bend.

To Punish and Enslave. The slogan stood out more than it should have. I wondered how many nightmares I'd have had of the guy if I'd actually slept through the previous night.

"Scrap," Jazz said flatly. "Hold on, Sam."

Well oka- wait what!? "Hold on? What do you mean hold on!?" Shouldn't he be tossing me out of his cabin right about now? Oh God, Barricade was going bipedal and Jazz only accelerated further. "Jazz." I said numbly. "Jazz, what are you doing?" My voice was getting dangerously close to that shrill quality I hated more than even taking Mojo out for a walk.

The Bot ignored me. He even had the nerve to accelerate. I thought we were going fast before, but the moment he gave me that warning, he shot forward as if he'd been blown out of a cannon. I thought we'd smash right into the 'Con, thought Jazz was aiming to do just that, to hit Barricade in the shins and hope it would be enough to throw him off his feet while we made our getaway.

Instead, three meters from the black robot, Jazz abruptly turned a full 90 degrees, and physics proved to be as much of a bitch as Miles always said she was. Momentum overpowered us immediately, sending us rolling like a deranged log. Or it would have, had Jazz not _done_ something, engaged some sort of afterburners he had next to the wheels.

We literally went flying, my stomach dropping as we were hurled twisting in mid-air. We did two complete revolutions in a second, and at the end of the third Jazz collided against Barricade hood-first with a rattling smash. The Decepticon staggered and howled in pain, chest and face plates warped and broken. Then my seatbelt was gone and Jazz went to pieces all around me, instantly.

I couldn't hold back a scream when I found myself flying through the air, but I only held it for a second. Then a servo curled around me, firmly and carefully, changing my uncontrolled flight into a swinging fall. I shrieked as Jazz swung around Barricade, one servo holding onto the police car's shoulder plate, the other never wavering in its grip on me. At least until his swing brought him low enough to dump me on the road.

I choked on my gasp. I barely thanked providence that I didn't fall on the Cube, or that nothing stuck in my eye during that mad maneuver. The voice of reason was suspiciously silent on whether or not I was one to talk after jumping off the top of a 25-story building only minutes before. Trying to get my bearings, I looked back to the fight, only to see that Jazz had used the collision and his subsequent momentum to pull Barricade around, ruining his balance and making him bend backwards. Jazz didn't give him any time to regain his senses. It all had been enough for him to swing on top of the Decepticon, until he was crouched on his torso, gun pointed right between red optics.

He fired.

Barricade's yell was muffled by the blast of blue and metal shavings. Jazz flipped forward, servo balancing his whole weight on the ruined face, then landed behind the 'Con faster than the latter could lose the rest of his balance. He brought his gun upward, bayonet stabbing through armor and squeezed the trigger again.

The laser blaster pistol may have been weak as far as Autobot armament went, but the shot was point-blank, right against the spark.

I saw and heard the flash of blue and gold as the forcefield was snuffed out and then the spark chamber burst in electric fire, seen even through the thick, black steel, or whatever it was. Jazz calmly pulled his gun out, subspaced it and turned away from his not yet fallen but most assuredly defeated foe. The metal groaned and the vocalizer sputtered as the frame collapsed with utter finality, death throes that I was going to remember for the rest of my life.

I was glad Barricade fell facing away from me. I didn't want his dying gaze to be burned into my memory, not when it would have happened from only two feet away. The though alone made my mind shudder in remembrance I couldn't explain, and the feel of the fiery ripples all over my brain flare.

I must've blacked out for a moment, because next thing I knew I was sprawled uselessly in Jazz's servos, holding my head and trying to filter the words of the agitated Autobot. "-rag, Optimus's gonna have my coating! Ah'm sorry, lil' buddy, ah was sure- …after seein' ya jump off the buildin' ah figured you'd be fine!"

"I _am_ ," I tried to say, but it came out like a moan. I tried again, pushing through the pounding in my head and somehow managing to make it lessen. "It's not that," I clutched at my head tighter, gritting my teeth when the pain spiked again. "We need to get the Cube to safety! Fast!" Because I had to get it _away_ from me, but I didn't tell Jazz that. Let him assume I was having some sort of premonition or whatever. If it meant I could get the Allspark off my hands faster, I was all for it. It was getting _desperate_.

That made me pause, and the throbbing pain in my skull eased. The feeling felt desperate… no, just agitated, like Jazz had just been. But it couldn't be. Unlike the Transformers, the Allspark was inanimate, an artefact. Technology. Granted, maybe it was a channel to some neglectful god, but still a physical connection to a sentience that wasn't sentient in _itself_. But I could feel _something_ from it.

The odd realization distracted me from my surroundings, maybe made me black out again, I wasn't sure. A small part of me wondered how bad I looked and how unresponsive I became, or for how long, because when my senses returned to me, I was back in Jazz' altmode and we were speeding down a street completely different from the one we were supposed to be on. He must've transformed around me.

I shook my head and held my forehead with one hand, hissing but willing the pain to die down back to a dull, manageably ache.

"Ya' back with me, Sam?" Jazz asked urgently and worriedly.

"Mostly," I forced out, eyes shut.

My seat slackened as some of Jazz' tension left him. How strange. "'Kay, there's been a change o' plans," he quickly relayed. "Ah'm goin' round, the long way, an' leavin' you right by the buildin' ye're headed for."

My eyes snapped open. "But they can track you-"

"The 'Cons are tied up. Optimus's dealin' with Megs just fine atta moment, an' the others are mostly occupied now that yer government's air support's come in. We got five minutes, so get a breather Sam." I fell silent and let my head lie back, wondering if I should tell Jazz his accent was actually an unholy mix of several different ones. Knowing him, he probably knew it and cultivated it deliberately. "Ah really am sorry for the stunt back there."

I blinked at how contrite he sounded. "Don't be. Mine was a lot more deranged."

"Still should'a thought ya might not've been up to anotha' so soon though."

I sighed. The 'bot probably didn't even know how much of Optimus' attitude he'd adopted over the centuries. Well, there was an easy way to deal with that. "I forgive you." The engine revved, in surprise or something else, I wasn't sure. "As long as you forgive me for inadvertently making you think I enjoyed things like that."

"Fair 'nough."

Jazz drove.

Then I saw something through my side window. "Stop here!"

"What? Sam, we're not-"

"Now!"

He did. For some reason, he listened to me, so I quickly got out. "Blackout again. Go! Help them."

"Ah's supposed ta-"

"You got me here!" I waved in the direction of the old building with statues towering on the edges of the roof. It was just two streets away. "I'm home free, and they need you more!" Not giving him a chance to retort, I ran as fast as I could. I heard Jazz curse behind me, but when he drove, he drove towards his comrades.

Thank the log for that!

Clearing the streets in record time, I ran past the disused metal gate. There was no grass in sight, and thankfully no dogs like in the junk yard two nights ago. The main chamber of the building was held up by columns, but they were old, chipped and moldy, and I ignored the details. As I ran, I thanked everyone who'd contributed for the continued absence of Megatron's looming presence. Maybe I could still pull it off. Even though my headache was getting unmanageable. Even though the staircase seemed almost unending from the ground level.

I climbed as fast as I could, which wasn't as fast as when I dashed up the fire escape earlier. I'd gone through both my second and my third winds by this point. But despite not getting a fourth, I eventually reached the top, even though I think I might have blacked out a couple of times from the constantly worsening attempt on my mind. At some point I must have fallen, because my unbandaged arm had a large scrape, and my right shin was throbbing.

Considering that my memory was supposed to be perfect, it was more than a little alarming. It was all I could do to not crawl into a corner and start to tremble and gibber. And with the pressure on my brain feeling really desperate now, I even started to consider allowing whatever was trying to happen. As long as my will stayed my own, it couldn't be worse than living the way I lived all my life until Henry found me.

I realized the direction my thoughts had gone just as I burst to the rooftop and growled, shaking my head. Despite how tired I was, I continued to run, lighting the flare by hitting it against a wall as I made my way into the open. If only the bad guys really were as occupied as Jazz said, then I could pass on the precious cargo and I was home free.

Well, as long as I survived any attempts on my life driven by Decepticon revenge anyway.

Once again, I only almost made it.

The chopper came up from beyond the building edge, and I was holding the cube out to be taken, when a rocket came out of nowhere and made the primary rotor explode. I screamed and fell backwards. The helicopter lost control, the tail swept over the building and me, its rotor cutting a long gash through the concrete less than a foot away from my head.

I would have marveled at my survival, if the fall hadn't left me with a perfect view of Megatron flying right for where I was lying. He'd shot the chopper down and was coming for me next. "Oh crap!" I stumbled to my feet and ran… somewhere. Where the sod was I supposed to go now!?

Megatron unfolded from jet form and landed somewhat shakily, much to my hidden surprise. There were char marks and crushed armor pieces on his abdomen, and the plating on his left outer forearm had been torn right off. I took that in at a glance, along with the sparking wires sticking out of his right shoulder. "Give me the cube, boy!" he roared. "Hand it over and you may live to be my pet."

I was already running. I didn't have Henry's grapple gun anymore, but there was nowhere else I could go at this point. Trying not to look down too much, I scrambled on the ledge, then hedged behind the large, three meters-tall statue of a nun. At the edge of my hearing, I thought I could hear a voice calling for me to hold on, but the wind and echoes of explosions made it hard to be sure. All I could do was hug the Angel's sculpted robe for dear life.

"Is it fear or courage that compels you, fleshling?"

It was a taunt. How cute, the big bad monster liked to play with his prey. Too bad for him I could give as good as I got. "You'd know about the former, wouldn't you?" I sniped back. "Nice look, with torn armor and burnt junk sticking out. Optimus was giving you a pounding so you fled, didn't you?" I stuck my head out just enough to show him what I felt about that. "I'm never going to give this Allspark to a coward like you!"

The roar was terrifying. Even if I hadn't seen his face twist in so much hate, the rage would have slammed into me and rattled my mind. Then the insane tyrant was swinging a gigantic flail, chain as long as two stories were tall.

It drove right through the base of the statue, and the ceiling holding it up. The sculpture tipped and fell, along with an avalanche of wrecked stonework. For the third time that day, I was freefalling, but this time I had absolutely no reassurance or control. I watched as the statue and debris came down from above, closing in on me. I could only hope that I'd die upon hitting the ground, because being buried alive would be worse.

Then something wrapped around me, slowed my fall and lifted me back up again. I was dazed, and left gasping in terror, enough that even my pounding headache was barely a concern. A large metal hand deposited me on the chest of a familiar figure, gently, carefully. And there he was, Optimus Prime, hanging on his back dozens of meters above the ground by his legs and hands. No, just _one_ hand, because the other came over me, protected me from the rocks coming at us from up high. "I've got you, boy."

This made it twice in as many days that he carried me and protected me from people and creatures vying for my life. True to his word, he had me. Despite how hard it must have been to jump and slide his way down from building to building. Despite how, on the way down, Megatron smashed into his back, taking advantage of how vulnerable I made him, he never let go of me or allowed anything to come within reach.

Somehow, he even managed to take most of the impact when the other mech struck him hard enough to make him lose his hold on the skyscraper's outer wall. He spun in mid-fall, meeting the ground back-first. But even as he did, he released some sort of weapons' fire, straight up. I heard and felt it go off, and I heard Megatron fly off to avoid further blasts after he wasn't able to avoid the first one.

Then light shone on me again. Optimus removed his hand and looked down at me from where he lay, with bright blue optics. "Sam…" I could hear his vents whirring and struts coiling as he flexed his limbs, but he seemed at a loss for words for some reason. "You risked your life for Jazz. You risked your life to protect the Cube."

I suppressed a flinch. I had no idea why I even did that for the Allspark considering what it was doing to me, whatever it was. "He did the same for us."

Optimus stared at me and I couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling. Then he began to sit up. "Sam." This time, I did feel the weight of his words. "If I cannot defeat Megatron, you must push the Cube into my chest. I will sacrifice myself to destroy it." My blood went cold, and the pain in my head exploded to the point where it was almost blinding. "Get behind me."

I don't know how I managed to stumble my way into cover. To slide down into the deep gauge in the street that reached as deep as the sewer drains. The way my brain felt like it was melting, I shouldn't have been able to do anything at all.

Optimus climbed to his feet, seemingly hurt and struggling, then spun on his heel so fluidly that it took my breath away. His ion rifle came out of subspace and was in his hand in less than a second, releasing bright, yellow bolt of energy aimed at the jet coming in fast from downtown.

It hit Megatron's cockpit straight on. The grey mech lost control of his flight and crashed on the boulevard, transforming because he had no other choice. He growled, snarled and cursed as he retaliated, but only one of three missiles hit the undaunted Prime. "It's you and me, now, Megatron!"

"No!" The Decepticon shouted as he moved to stand, a whole block down the street. "It's just me, Prime!" He fired his plasma cannon, but Optimus had already predicted his response and dodged, superheated swords coming out of both wrists.

His battle mask came down. "At the end of this day, one shall rise, one shall _fall_."

Somehow, a huge, spiked mace was already in the claw, coming down. "Then fall!" Metal met a smoldering cross-guard, and the resulting shockwave shattered windows.

As I stared at the amazing fight, I couldn't help but think that all those people writing about confrontations between titans or giants never really got the scale of things right. I could only keep with their movements because of how large they were. Optimus and Megatron struck at each other, blocking, missing and hitting true with such a weight behind their blows that pavement cracked under their feet and any windows still intact rattled around them. The blue and red Autobot caught the other in the thigh, but Megatron returned the blow much harder. The much larger and heavier mace smashed into the Prime's side, spikes bending against his plates, but not all. Some pieced through circuits and punctured energon lines.

The pressure in my mind exploded, and I bit back a cry of pain or Optimus would have been distracted. The world went white, even though I'd shut my eyes. When I regained some of myself, I was kneeling in the water from the drains around me, barely keeping my arms straight against the ground, keeping myself from collapsing all the way. Above me, missiles flew from somewhere, until they exploded against the walls of the building nearby, except for some that reached deeper and damaged the supports further in. The Allspark was shimmering and humming against my thigh. Ignoring it, I looked up in time to see Optimus dodge away from a punch. I must have blacked out longer than I thought because they had discarded their weapons.

The Prime caught Megatron's arm by the wrist and struck back with a right hook to the face. It hit true, sending the monster reeling, but he wasn't done. Wrist released, a second punch got the grey 'Con right in the gut, bending him over, then Optimus smashed such a powerful uppercut in his foe's chin that his head snapped back, taking the rest of him along.

Megatron literally _flew_ from the strike and crashed on his back, painfully, a full five meters away.

For just a moment, I thought Optimus had it in the bag.

Then Megatron brought his cannon out of subspace and _fired_ -

Optimus stepped aside. The blast went wide…

…right in my direction. It didn't hit me, since I wasn't _at_ ground level, but the incredibly destructive plasma bolt lit the entire ground floor of the previously damaged building on fire, and the whole thing _shuddered_.

By then, Megatron had stumbled to his feet and started swinging a fist with one arm, and his cannon with the other. He was in full berserker rage, red optics glowing. I could see them clearly even from where I was, heard him yell vows of vengeance and snarling invectives, letting his outrage take over when focus failed. He looked every bit the part of someone who couldn't understand how he could possibly be matched in battle. But here Optimus was, giving as good as he got, despite the energon splattered all over his side.

No, he did _better_ , meeting every blow, blocking or dodging increasingly wild assaults while retaliating with unrelenting precision, until Megatron tried to smash him aside with a wide, backwards sweep of his right arm. The arm that had a cannon stuck to the back of it, making it over twice as thick as it actually was.

Optimus didn't dodge. He didn't even retreat. Instead, he shot forward and caught the limb, cannon and all, under the arm and refused to let go, despite the wear and tear that was obvious on him. His other arm came around and grabbed Megatron around the neck. They were both pinned in place, despite how Megatron struggled, how he thrashed, snarled, bellowed and pulled at the vise around his neck with the only claw still free.

A normal person wouldn't have seen it from my distance, but my eyes weren't normal. I saw it clearly, how the berserker fury in Megatron's optics gave way to a more malicious and spiteful form of boiling madness. Even as he kept up his struggles, he arched his gun arm as far as he could, charged up his plasma cannon and _released_. The shot blurred through the space above me even as I pointlessly ducked from the fright. And just as it exploded against the ground level of the building at my back, Megatron fired _again_.

It hit the same spot, loud and smoldering. And when the madman fired a third time, fourth counting the first one, five counting the missiles, I realized what he was doing, and it caught my breath in my throat.

The apartment building behind me trembled, and something essential inside it _broke_.

I was out of the chasm in the street like a gunshot. I didn't even know I had so much strength in my arms as to haul myself out of there so fast, even after leaping to the fire escape earlier. But I would have been insane to think about it much when the apartment building, with a world-bending groan, tilted forward _with_ _countless people still inside_.

Between me and Megatron, I don't know who was more shocked by the roar of utter fury that Optimus released when he realized what was happening. The Prime's whole frame surged visibly with a blue, shimmering flare of energon. His hold on the cannon arm tightened, pulled backwards so suddenly that the limb was wrenched out of its socket with an unmerciful rending noise. Megatron bellowed his rage and agony to the sky, but was cut short when Optimus tore the cannon right off the useless limb, grabbed it with both hands and swung horizontally. It clubbed Megatron in the torso with the combined grace of a hundred rampaging rhinos.

Optimus was winded and let the improvised blunt weapon fall from his hands. He barely managed to hold his footing when his spin stopped, but he didn't even try to turn back to where Megatron had crashed bodily into the middle of the boulevard. Instead, he took a shaky step towards me, then picked up speed, and it reminded me that I should _get the hell away from there._

With one last look at the building that was tipping in my direction, I took off with all the speed I could still find. It was heads below what I'd pulled off before, but it was a damn quick run all the same. I just had to ignore the wrenching sounds as more supports failed to keep the building upright. I just had to drown out the many human screams of terror that were coming from inside. I just had to run until Optimus reached me and miraculously saved my hide again. Then maybe I could finally do something about the pulsing burning in my brain-

Optimus reached me and then leaped past. It was so baffling that I stumbled to a halt with a yelp. I turned around, barely avoiding a nasty twist of my ankle, just in time to see the Prime pull out two, huge poles from his subspace. They were easily as long as he was tall, and when he brought them down next to each of his feet, they pierced the street and ground beneath it at an angle, sunk up to a full third of their total length. Sounds a lot like those of cyber transformations filled my ears as pieces of them broke off, slapping the ground and turning them into quadpods.

Then the other ends opened the same way and rocketed forward, crossing the space between the mech and the face of the tipping building in an instant. They were weird three-pronged things, with diameters as wide as four apartments put together. As soon as they hit, the springs still connecting them to the main rods went from flexible to utterly rigid in a nanosecond, then began to push and _extend_. I gaped in total stupefaction as the building's collapse was stopped, then slowly, ever so slowly, the apartment block started to be pushed back up.

I could only wonder how many times in the past Megatron had pulled this stunt. How many times he shot down building as a distraction. How many times the tactic won, to the point where Optimus had taken to carrying instant-deployable buttresses everywhere he traveled.

Prime stumbled in his turn back from the supports that had just saved the lives of over four hundred people. Lives that were staring, slack-jawed through the windows of the block they'd all thought they were about to die in. With a jolt of worry, I hurried around him and got my confirmation: the Bot was leaking energon badly from the side where the spiked mace had caught him earlier. The… bleeding seemed to have stopped, but it had been so bad for that short time that it had pooled, hadn't all drained from his systems even now, making it look worse than it was, which was still a lot.

The bot looked down at me, then his helm snapped back and he bent forward, pulling me out of the way just before a plasma blast hit him in the shoulder instead of destroying the buttress he'd put up. He grunted and I felt the way his whole frame shook as he fell to one knee. Hot air blasted by my face despite how fully I'd been shielded.

"Kneeling sure suits you, Prime!" Megatron sneered from up ahead. He was dragging his feet, literally, and was tipping forward almost as much as the building had, not long ago. But his face showed only vindictive glee at finally gaining the upper hand. "You sill fight for the weak! That is why you lose!" Right arm still useless, he heaved the cannon with only his left and released another charge.

Optimus caught it right in his back and choked out a gasp. He'd shielded me again and I wanted to curse myself for being such a nuisance. Then again, he'd've probably done the same just to make sure Megatron didn't destroy the supports he'd just put up. "Sam…" But a third cannon blast hit the ground right where his knee was and he collapsed the rest of the way to the ground, losing hold of me at last.

I'd long since untied the Cube and taken to hugging it to my chest, so I didn't let it hit anything in my painful roll. Before I knew it, I was on the ground, on the side, with a perfect view of Optimus' face as his optics told me what he wanted even before he spoke the words. "Sam, put the Cube in my chest." His digits had already grabbed hold of his own armor to pry it apart.

Then the Airforce _finally_ got around to doing their job, I couldn't help but snap sarcastically in the privacy of my pain-addled mind. Three different jets flew past, sonic booms blasting winds everywhere. Megatron's vocalizer told the world just how outraged and hurt he was with every rocket and bullet that landed as he was assaulted by three different jets at once. Even then, he single-mindedly staggered towards us, a figure shrouded in smoke and flames that paid testament to his condition, trying to push and twist away from the worst of the airborne artillery and failing.

"No! NO!" The mech grunted. "Mine!" He was mad. "Allspark!" he crashed to all fours just meters away from me and I crawled away. He lunged for me, but Optimus managed to strike his feet from under him with one last swing of his arm. Megatron fell to the ground under the combined attack of the planes that were now flying off, and the world went still as a picture, with me kneeling half-way between the two mortal enemies that had once been something completely different.

I felt a pang of sorrow so boundless…

The Allspark was brilliantly aglow on the high level of perception that I had just tuned in, though only I saw it in the moment when time slowed to a crawl. I suddenly knew what had happened during each and every blackout I'd suffered throughout that hellish day. What had happened each time was what was again happening right now. With clarity I couldn't explain, I knew I had been right in assuming that the Cube itself had no sentience of any sort. And yet still it acted independently, constantly battering my brain as it tied sub-dimensional pockets of information to each and every single neuron I possessed. Kept doing that to me, as though it was being controlled remotely from somewhere.

And each time I blacked out was because I somehow managed to reach a form of higher thought. A form of higher thought that let me dismantle the sub-dimensions and upload the massive amount of data into my mental body on the psychic plane. They were episodes I had no hope of remembering with my limited, carnal mind, not when every instant lasted both an eternity and no time at all.

But I had had _enough!_

If there was no way to remember or properly control these episodes without maintaining this form of higher thought, then I just had to make it permanent! And if it meant I would have to turn my brain into a mere antenna that would simply tune into this higher level as stay that way, then I was simply achieving what humans were always supposed to strive towards anyway!

Willing everything in my mind to settle and focus, I looked inward and _pulled_.

The pressure on my head suddenly disappeared. The subdimensional pockets attached to my neurons, all 100 billion of them, burst open all at once. Each had a whole repository of data tucked inside, each filled with more information that my carnal mind would have been able to contain. My mental body swelled, grew, expanded miles wide as all the information contained in the Allspark streamed _upwards_. Science, physics, history, art, all of it poured up and out in rivers of light, visions like movies that fast-forwarded too fast for me too catch. All of them written in glyphs and languages of several different kinds.

It was all one, big, fat, incoherent mess. Completely bereft of whatever classification matrix the mysterious third party remotely controlling the Cube had tried to arrange in my head.

Lovely. I guess I again only _almost_ managed to achieve my goal.

Looking down at the cube without actually _looking_ , I saw what was left. It was the confirmation to the suspicion that had been growing all day.

It wasn't what the Cube was doing to me that felt wrong. The Allspark itself was _wrong_.

The third party whose existence I had not confirmed, but was certain existed anyway, left one last directive in the Allspark before the cube's constant push on my mind winked out. And for once, we were of the same purpose, even though I didn't really appreciate whoever it was trying to mentally "nudge" me in the right direction as far as the Cube's fate should be.

Physical reality and time crashed into order with a suddenness that would have left me unresponsive for precious seconds if I hadn't gone through this several times already today. As it was, I still barely dodged Megatron's attempt to claw at me from where he was still half-crashed but looming over me from above. The glyphs floating everywhere in sight were really distracting, but there was no way I was going to let myself regress into the limited mind frame of before now that I'd properly synced psychically.

Gritting my teeth against the general pain that my headache was no longer masking, I shot forward and held the cube straight up.

The Allspark. His! Well, he could have it!

Megatron roared in pain and struggled above me, trying to maintain his consciousness and his life, but failing to do either as the Cube turned into a long stream of solar fire. He thrashed from side to side, almost hitting me, but I managed to scramble away just in time once the Allspark was totally consumed. The mech's chest was full of fire and liquid morphsteel, spark chamber melted against the rest of his internal circuitry. He trembled madly, arching his back in a last, twitching seizure before he finally fell and went still, less than a foot from me.

Behind me, Optimus couldn't believe what had just happened. I could practically feel his disbelief, refusing to go away for a good, long minute. Even then, as it was replaced by cautious hopefulness, it was mixed with grief. Much of it. With painstaking slowness, the Prime pushed himself up with an arm, then climbed to his knees, before he dared to lift himself to a stand the rest of the way. He was just in time to see the red optics shutter to black. The look that settled over his face then… I hated that I was the cause of it, even more than I hated upsetting him two nights before.

"You left me no choice, brother…" And just like that, my self-recrimination was swept away by utter pity towards the one whose life I had just terminated. The one whose spark reeked of the same taint as the Allspark had, only with far, far greater darkness.

"Sam." I looked up to find Optimus Prime on one knee next to me yet again. "I owe you my life."

"Not really," I deadpanned. "I'm still behind you by two."

Somewhere to the right, Jazz laughed.

The Autobots had crowded around us, most gazing in relief and awe at the 40 foot-tall form of Optimus Prime as he used words to acknowledge the efforts and sacrifices of all who'd participated in the fight. Even Bumblebee was there, thanks to the tow truck that Mikaela had used to drive him straight through enemy lines not much earlier. I suppose this was the part where I looked around, to make sure everyone was alright, to see how many of my fellow humans had died and survived. But I couldn't tear away my eyes from the still frame of the enemy. Not now, when some of Henry's last words finally came back to me.

Baptism by fire, was it?


	9. No Island Nation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Optimus and Sam have a talk prior to the meeting with he US officials, which leads, among other things, to consideration being given to how nuke-able islands tend to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took way too long to get started on this. I guess finishing part one cut a bit of the wind from my sails. Hopefully this will restore some of my momentum. Alas, I have to go abroad a bit in a couple of weeks, so I can't promise faster updates yet.

**Arc II: Metaphysical Rearrangement**

**Chapter 1: No Island Nation**

The new day dawned violet.

I had not had the chance to actually watch the sunrise the previous day, frantic as our journey had been. But I suppose it would not even have crossed my mind to stop for it regardless, despite the many other star systems I visited during my long life.

Cybertron did not have sunrises, nor sunsets, for Cybertron did not have a _sun_.

For the longest time, no Autobot realized just how abnormal Cybertron was in the universe by virtue of that alone. A planet without a star to supply light and energy. _Life_. Since my earliest days, the only light that existed on Cybertron was the very faint one that shone from the planet itself, here and there. Or the one we produced with our optics, our devices, our constructions, our _technology_. Some believed Cybertron to be special. Independent. _Superior_. After all, our planet, and us ourselves, did not need to depend on a large ball of fire to live our lives. Those voices grew quite vocal when the Allspark was finally found.

Then they could do naught but fall utterly silent when it was discovered that the Cube could not function for long on what little energy it still had stored. It was only thanks to Sentinel Prime's knowledge and memories of the old, ancient days that the solution did not elude us forever: the power of a star was needed to energize the Cube. The knowledge needed to build a solar harvester had long since been lost, but Wheeljack proved able to come up with an alternative: a device that teleported a sun into the planet's proximity, fueling the Cube without being absorbed. It was a sign of a new age.

Little wonder everything around us crumbled as soon as we stole the Cube away from Megatron's control. The device that was keeping the Sun in place was tied to the Allspark and failed as soon as the Cube was gone. After hundreds of vorns, Cybertron was starless once more.

Yet even while we had a Sun there were no sunrises. Cybertron did not spin. It had no revolution because there was nothing for it to revolve around. The sun was merely… there, in the same place, right above the Al Simfur Temple, just several light minutes away. And at the same time, it was not there at all. For while the heat and light bore down on Cybertron, the star's mass and resulting gravity were absent – the sun was not all _there_ – so Cybertron never so much as shifted on its own axis from its appearance.

Looking at the horizon now, at the violet as it slowly, so slowly gave way to red and gold, I wondered if perhaps history would have gone differently if there _had_ been a sunrise and a sunset on Cybertron.

I had spent much of the night going through the history of mankind, or what was recorded of it on their world-spanning network of information. Through the rise and twilight of so many civilizations, humans always held reverence for the sun, in one way or another. Even now, in what they called the modern age, they ordered their lives around it. Around its presence in the sky, or lack thereof. Reveled and _lived_ under its rays, and retired into slumber, went _still_ in its absence. The sunset brought with it the urge to let go of everything, all worries, all _grudges_ and just _rest_. And each dawn brought along the promise of a new day, the hope for a better existence.

Cybertron never had that. We lived, worked and recharged based on our roles in society, self-determined or issued to us by whatever authority we recognized. Even after the Great War ended upon the Allspark's discovery, that did not change. There was never a period of a cycle set aside when everyone, or at least the vast majority of the population, slipped into stillness and just let everything _go_. While one Autobot recharged, retired into their inner world and attained a certain realization or understanding, another with whom they may have had an argument would go about their business for however long they could, and their misgivings would merely linger or fester. Even if one had the chance to rest and reflect on things in the stillness of the inner dream – dream that sometimes seemed to last so much longer than the cycles that actually passed outside – the other would simply refuse to accept any apology or peace offering when put forward.

All because of the disparity in their sense of _time_.

Ah, but perhaps I was merely trying to swim in a vacuum. Grasp at straws, as humans would say. Even if there had been days and nights on Cybetron, it likely would not have mattered. How much time could be spent without recharging depended greatly on the size and quality of each bot's frame, the age of their spark and their supply of energon. And on their upgrades, or lack thereof.

I suppose I was only trying to rationalize my impression of the daybreak. My wish that Cybertron could have experienced something like this, light coloring the sky, breaking through clouds, streaming over the land in rays that set the whole world aglow. It was change in its most essential form.

It was magnificent.

A ping diverted one of my processing threads away from the view. I had closed all direct comm lines, and my Autobots all knew what it meant, that I wished to spend some time alone in all senses of the word. That one of them decided to disturb my vigil here, on the outskirts of Mission City – concealed from prying eyes by the rising highway – meant there was something at least moderately important that could use my attention.

I did not turn from the dawn – I did not yet wish to lay optics on the so very different view that the cityscape behind me was, compared to the horizon – but I accepted the hail.

 _:Boss bot.:_ Ah, so it was Jazz. _:The kid wants ta talk to ya before th' meetin' with the human reps.:_

Ah. _:Did he say why?:_

_:Nope.:_

_:What is the ETA of the US Government representatives?:_

_:Couple more hours. Plus maybe half again for'em ta get settled an' get over their nerves, once they see just how big we are.:_

_:Very well. Bring him over.:_

_:Roger that. Jazz out.:_

It was not as though I would ever refuse a meeting with the boy, no matter how much time we had until the delegation arrived. Indeed, the reason I even asked Jazz for an ETA was to see if I had to come up with a reason to postpone it while Sam and I had our discussion. Though I did wonder what he wanted to ask that he could not needle out of my chief intelligence officer. Primus knew the boy had spent most of his awake time picking his processor, after the search and rescue stage of the battle cleanup was complete.

After Megatron's defeat and Starscream's subsequent retreat, Bumblebee requested that he be allowed to stay with the boy indefinitely. After having scanned some examples of earth technologies, he had managed to rearrange some internal circuits into something akin to a human speaker system. It could not reproduce the intricacies of Mechan enabled by our vocalizers, but did allow him to directly communicate in human languages.

Sam agreed to the assignment, but the way he did it summoned a flash of concern from me. The boy agreed almost _distractedly_. I would have set it aside as a side effect of his adrenaline levels dropping, if the boy did not continue to exhibit almost erratic behavior throughout the rest of the day. Regardless, I still had to entrust Sam to another, since Bumblebee needed some serious assistance from our medic and could not resume his Guardian duties immediately. Jazz volunteered for the job even before I could ask him.

I brought forth my CIC's holoreport about his and Samuel's activities over the course of the past 20 hours, as well as my own recordings of the human. According to Jazz' hololog, Sam seemed to get lost in thought every few minutes, then he would grimace or shake his head as if to clear it and his vision. He was easily startled every time such a thing happened, and tripped on every loose rock, and once even on his own feet. Jazz eventually decided to keep him inside his alt mode, and would have urged the boy to see the paramedics if he had not already received evidence that the boy had not, in fact, taken any blows to the head. Ratchet had confirmed the absence of harmful compounds in his bloodstream as well, so that was another possibility eliminated.

Being confined to the interior of the Pontiac Solstice only concluded with Sam persuading Jazz to take him for a drive through the places where the battle had been the worst. They ended up finding and rescuing several people who had been hiding, stranded, buried or otherwise harmed during the conflict. All the while, Samuel would suggest seemingly random turns, but I had my own thoughts on the matter.

When they were not "fortuitously" locating people in need of help, Sam would ask questions. And there was no set topic. One moment it was about Cybetronian society _("Was a cool era, that,"_ Jazz would say, _"ah' specially liked tha oilcakes'n alt' races."_ ), other times about our gear ( _"Actually, Sam, Ironhide'n'Bumblebee've got plasma cannons. Megs' huge-aft pea shooter was a fusion gun, which is much, much worse")._ Sometimes Sam would ask about other planets we may have been to ( _"Ya won' believe tha place ah' landed on when ah' got tossed across space by a foldspace warhead! It was this big, glowin' rock where th'accumulated knowledge of a huge bunch of alien cultures was condensed into some kind'a sensory precipitation, like an Information Highway! Ah coulda' stayed there forevah!"_ )

Jazz almost _had_ stayed forever. He even ignored Ratchet's homing beacon, and when the predatory planet absorbed him, only his own warning beacon saved him. It was meant to prevent Ironhide and Ratchet from coming after him and becoming trapped as well, but they did the opposite. Ironhide "persuaded" the planet to give Jazz back by shooting at it repeatedly.

I could not stop myself from feeling some bitterness at the recollection, the realization of how low being starved of energon had brought us. That once we were powerful enough to stand against whole planets on our own, but now we were so weak and vulnerable in comparison. We could be taken down by a coordinated assault of ballistic missiles, despite how we should be able to survive atomic explosions.

Jazz did not clue Sam in on that fact, but I think he suspected, though he asked no more questions about it.

Throughout the discussion, Sam's ability to stay focused only seemed to get worse, until the boy suddenly decided to crawl to Jazz' backseat and fall asleep. Though, again, I was not quite sure the log was accurate. Jazz' sensors never truly registered Sam's brain activity falling to the level of slumber, let alone enter REM. It did gradually settle, but it never actually dropped low enough.

The boy did not move for nearly four hours. At all. Not even a twitch. Neither did his (abnormally high for humans) brain activity falter. However, his endorphin levels rose to optimum levels, and so did every single other life sign. Then he roused and was once more aware, a smooth transition from total motionlessness to being wide awake. After an hour, it became apparent that his attention span had gone more or less back to normal as well.

I was relieved to learn that. The boy had already gone through enough without suffering permanent mental harm on top of it.

I heard Jazz come to a stop on the high road behind me, but I did not turn. Neither did I move during the time it took Sam to make his way to the right of me. I wanted to enjoy my first (more or less) Terran sunrise uninterrupted for as long as I could.

It was many minutes later, when the round, bright, yellow disc known as Sol finally appeared in the sky, that I realized Sam had been standing next to me for some time already. And he had kept his peace. Had stayed silent and let me completely ignore him in favor of the show that the universe had put on. Shuttering my optics, I looked down, a belated greeting on the top of my glossa, but I was rendered mute by the sight below.

There the boy was with his arms crossed, leaning a shoulder against my leg and his temple resting against my outer shin armor.

How did not I feel him lean against me? My proximity sensors may have been shut down while my defrag process was in progress – I could not afford to take an actual recharge cycle just yet – but the tactile sensors in my surface plating…

Ah. I had turned them off prior to yesterday's crisis, as per standard combat procedure, but forgotten to reactivate them after the conclusion of the battle. With a simple inner command, they were again online, instantly feeding my processor all relevant information. They were not as sensitive or accurate as the sensor net in my servos, but they still relayed much: the weight pressing against me, the coarseness of Sam's hooded upper garment, his breathing rhythm as extrapolated from the vibrations in his muscles, even the texture of his hair.

On a whim, I compared the readings to those I recorded yesterday, when I tried to hide them from the Sector Seven forces. Immediately the touch readings confirmed what my optics suggested: the clothes were different, and Sam's hair was now free of fat and the dirt and dust that had clung to him like a second skin throughout the entirety of the previous day's fight. A quick comm exchange with Jazz revealed that Sam, earlier that morning, had rather brazenly broken into a gym two neighborhoods away, to use the showers there. And that was _after_ he requisitioned the necessary toiletries and a change of clothes and footwear from a half-destroyed store they passed by on the way.

A less than adequate recompense for everything he had gone through. It made the difference between him and the type of people who made up Sector Seven even wider than before. "Hello boy."

I felt more than heard his huff. "Keep calling me that and I'll think you don't like my name for some reason." Sam pried his eyes open and looked up, throwing me a vaguely amused glance, but still not pulling away even an inch. "Not that I'd blame you. It _is_ kind of pretentious."

Ah. Easy banter. A welcome extension to my short reprieve. "Pretentious, you say." I decided to allocate a computing process to an Internet search just in case.

"Samuel." His voice was tinted with a nuance of self-deprecating humor I knew well, for I often used it myself. "Name of God." Shaking his head – an unusual feeling against my outer metal shell – he switched his gaze from me to the far-off sun. "Or 'God has Heard,' according to some people."

Like him, I turned my attention towards the rising Sun. "A good, strong name."

He gave a short laugh. "Optimus," he grinned up at me. "You think my folks are religious? Mom named me after a poodle she saw once on a cereal box."

I blinked down at him, _very slowly_.

After some internal debate, my background process flicked through several dozen search results for the word "cereal." When that turned up nothing relevant, I wrestled with an inexplicable feeling of dread before I looked up "poodle." And despite knowing the sheer folly of it, I virtually superimposed Sam's face on the bizarre animal's head.

My incredulity must have shown on my face somehow, for Sam looked away and started laughing in earnest.

I shook my helm in a futile attempt to banish the image. It was simply _wrong_. "You humans are such strange creatures."

Sam's laughter tapered out. "Yeah, I guess we are." Then it was like his entire mood simply shifted. "When we're not too busy being complete assholes." The boy sighed suddenly, and his posture slackened. Not in the way characteristic of one escaping some tension, but in a manner that suggested some sort of weight was suddenly bearing down on them after having gained just a temporary reprieve from having to carry it.

The boy walked to the backpack that never seemed to be more than a few meters away from his person. It was on the ground. He grabbed it by the strap before turning towards me once more.

After a moment's thought, I dropped to one knee and held out my servo for him to climb upon.

He did not hesitate in accepting, and made sure to pull his bag along and drop it next to his feet as soon as he was on. His balance did not waver in the slightest during the seconds it took me to resume my previous, standing position.

"What would you like to talk about?"

"Bunch of things," Sam leaned against my half-closed digits. "I also promised you an explanation I guess. But with those officials coming I don't know for sure what time we've got. And there's a lot I still don't get myself so…" He scratched his cheek. "I was thinking we could swap. I ask a question, then you ask a question, then I ask a question and, well, so and so on."

"A topic swap then." Indeed, there were some things I wanted to clarify. Bumblebee's reports were wealthy in information, but for every answer, two or more questions popped up. "That is acceptable."

"Okay." He opened his mouth, then closed it with a grimace. "Actually, you start."

How curious. Perhaps he believed his intended question would be offensive or otherwise inappropriate. "Very well." I was already compiling readings to the full extent of what our scanners permitted without endangering human health. "According to Jazz, you rested relatively successfully but never truly slept."

Sam's eyebrows jumped high indeed. How very flexible their outer derma was. "Man, I feel like an ass for what I was about to open this talk with." What could that mean? I suppose I was going to find out soon enough. "I didn't sleep. It was actually a trance. Sort of like meditation, but a bit deeper." He shook his head. "Don't ask me how I could do it, because I'm still trying to figure it out."

I was already looking up the topic of meditation, this time not ignoring the more "fanciful" tales.

But it was Sam's turn to finally bring up a subject. "I destroyed the Allspark." I suppressed the outer reaction to being faced with that horrible fact so bluntly. "That means I basically destroyed your future."

I already knew that Sam was not one to succumb to fear, but the way he so bravely face his perception of reality still surprised me. Still, the way he said it cut through my spark. "No, you did not." I told him as firmly as I could. I had to make sure he could see how incorrect his conclusion was. "It was I who made the decision to destroy it, well before we even reached Mission City. You only chose how the end came about." I wanted to reassure him further, but I knew that I could not muster a sincere smile. "I apologize for placing you in that position."

The boy winced. "Jazz said you'd say that."

"You should have listened to him. Not many are those who could have done as you have, pulled something good out of a worst case scenario. You saved many lives, including my own."

Sam did not look altogether reassured, but he did fall silent. I suppose that even if he did not believe that about himself, he could accept that _I_ did.

And so it was once more my turn. "You said, the day before yesterday, that you would explain how your and Bumblebee's freedom came about."

The boy's face fell briefly, but he rallied himself. "Yeah, I did." He pulled away from where he was leaning against my digits. "It really was sort of a divine intervention. Bumblebee sent you reports about everything he was present for, right?"

"Yes."

"Then you already know Henry was my reincarnated ancestor." He looked as sad as I felt for him. "I still haven't pieced together exactly which parts of the world's lore about reincarnation is true. I just know it happened with him. He literally got born again a bunch of decades back so he could make sure Sector Seven didn't mess up more than it helped. The reason he was able to stop the car convoy was because he'd been sabotaging the S7 cars and helicopters for years." The boy smiled wryly. "He called it Protocol Bad Breath." He sighed. "Not sure what he called what he did to the dam though. He'd been planting explosives there for a lot longer, just in case Megatron broke free. I guess he felt responsible, since he was the one who first found him in the arctic. I think he would've stuffed Megatron himself with C4 if there had been any way to do it without others catching on. If you ask me, Sector Seven should've planted some inside the 'Con themselves."

I did not comment. I was somewhat conflicted on the subject of my former brother, even now. Prowl would probably have approved of the plan, however.

"Right," Sam said. "My turn again." He seemed to hesitate for a while. "How are things between you and Bumblebee? I mean, did he ask to stay with me because…" He gestured rather helplessly with his hands.

I felt something akin to warmth blanketing my spark for the moment. The boy wanted to know if he could help us reconcile. "You believe he asked to stay with you due to a desire to not be in my immediate presence after I let him be taken," I deduced, making him grimace. "I can understand why you would ask. Alas, I fear Bumblebee does not think along the same lines as us."

The boy blinked. "Don't tell me. He's already forgiven you."

"He never held it against me to begin with." Sometimes I wondered how my scout could retain his unwavering belief in me. Wondered how utterly that belief would shatter if he learned of what the relation between us was. "He actually apologized for getting himself captured and putting me in that situation." It was strange and spark-tearing. Especially after the outburst Bumblebee experienced following Ironhide's ill-thought rebuke.

"Huh." Sam said, shaking his head in wonder. "You and him are so much alike."

Oh, Samuel, if only you knew. "Not necessarily a pleasant thought." I had become this way after hundreds of vorns of battle and tragedy, and spirit pains caused by a torn sibling sparkbond. No matter how candid he was on the outside at times, Bumblebee was becoming jaded without those two factors. It hurt to witness.

I changed the subject, since my turn had come to raise a topic. "You and your mentor have displayed certain skills and aptitudes that are not the norm for humans."

The boy took the change of subject in stride. "Believe me, I'm as surprised by that as you are." He looked away from me, gazing at the brightening sun instead. "He gave me an explanation, sort of, but I haven't wrapped my mind around it yet." He huffed in amusement, as if laughing at a private joke. "It's got to do with how much of our brains we can use for _active thought_." The boy scoffed. "Among _many_ other things." He finally turned to meet my optics again. "I won't try to tell you what to do with the information you already have. It's not like anyone is actively trying to conceal it. It's just that people don't generally believe in anything supernatural and rationalize it away." His eyes fell on the Bag of Tricks. "Probably a good idea not to bring it or anything about Henry up in the talks today, or any other day."

Well, between this discussion and the holoreports from Bumblebee, it was all but confirmed that there was something divine or at least supernatural watching over this world, like Primus did for ours. The only strange thing was that, for all their professed faith in various gods and religions, humans probably would not believe a word Samuel ever told them about it, if he were so inclined.

It did not completely explain certain things, like how all evidence suggested that Sam had experienced a vision just before our arrival to Mission City. Vision that enabled him to manipulate events enough that Jazz survived the engagement. I decided not to press him for details. Our sense of time was different from that of humans. I could easily wait weeks or months for Bumblebee to coax the details out of the boy.

"Okay." Sam took a deep breath. "In light of everything, I'm glad I didn't open with this. Guess there's no avoiding it now though."

Did he mean that the question about the Allspark was not the heaviest subject he had in mind?

When the boy eyed me with that intense but wary look in his eyes, I already knew my answer. "What did you mean when you called Megatron your brother?"

My spark twinged suddenly, as though the bond had been torn within the past decacycle instead of thousands of vorns ago. Internal circuits jolted, strained for the barest of moments.

As soon as it happened, the feeling faded, as it always did.

Still, the damage had been done. My optic shutters had closed for a moment, and the expected twitch in my joint motors caused the digits of the arm holding Sam aloft to come closer together. Brought the whole hand closer to my chassis as well.

What a farce. These spark lurches came and went almost periodically, but I could usually weather them without any outward evidence of the fact by now. Why the reaction was so obvious this time around, I could not fathom. Especially since Sam's question had not come completely out of the blue.

For a fleeting nanosecond, I had the odd feeling that someone had played a cruel trick.

"Nevermind." Sam said all too hastily. "I knew it was a touchy subject when Jazz refused to answer my questions. And I guess that even if you were brothers, whatever it means to you guys, you probably won't want to talk about it, especially so soon. I just figured it was more like battle brother or something-"

He cut himself off when I raised my other servo in the universal warding gesture. If it were any other person, Autobot or human alike, perhaps I would wonder what his angle was. But as I beheld him, I knew he was ready to put the topic out of his mind. Even if I answered him with something vague, or even an outright lie, he would accept my words and bury the issue out of simple consideration for me.

My free hand moved to the side of my head, activating my left optic's holographic emitters. The light streamed from it and consolidated into the image of a small, pulsing, star-like mass of light right next to the human. "This is a spark."

Sam looked at me in surprise, but quickly overcame it in favor of satisfying his curiosity. He edged to the side of my servo and peered as closely as he dared.

The floating spark moved, so that a second one could appear next to it. "There are several types of bonds that can be formed between sparks. The most common one is between creators and hatchlings." The Cube appeared above and between the two sparks. A third, smaller spark descended from it. Once it was free of the Allspark, the two mature sparks closed in and overlapped slightly. The third, tiny one settled in that spot where the overlap occurred. "This kind of bond allows the sparks of the parents, what we call Creators, to emotionally anchor and sustain the younger one. It is not necessary for the spark to live and grow, but it does enrich their life, like any support from family would. Also, it allows the Creators' sparks to provide energy to the younger one when in near enough proximity, allowing it to grow more stably and fully. Also, it allows for empathic and telepathic communication, even sharing of images."

The small spark began to grow, but the overlap between it and the other two remained, even as the new mech gained more and more individuality. Around the small spark, a spark chamber appeared. "As you can see, the chamber is dotted with holes. While the two horizontal digi-rods holding it in place play the roles of data links, the holes are access points for energon lines. The field around the chamber is not actually a defense. Instead, it is the energon being turned into _energy_. Energon is inert, you see. It is the spark that… transmutes it shall we say. And the larger the spark, the larger the spark chamber and, by extension, the more access points it can handle."

"And the more energon it can move, the more stuff you guys can do," Sam concluded, staring unblinking at the three sparks in my hologram. "The spark bonds aren't palpable or even visible at all, though, are they?"

His intuition must have been acting up again. "Indeed they are not. In truth, they are more along the lines of overlapping, metaphysical nodes." In the hologram, the young spark grew beyond the node borders, until it as the size of its Creators. I was glad humans had Venn Diagrams to use as a visual reference. "Eventually, the spark reaches adulthood. But as you can see, the overlap remains, acting as an empathic and telepathic connection, as I said before." In the figure, one of the adult sparks disappeared. "There does not even need to be a pair of parents. There were plenty of cases when a single mech or femme presented a frame to the Allspark and had it given life without a second parent there. The resulting relationship and bond is the same. And every new spark that joints the family, so to speak, passes through the same bond-node as the previous ones." The sparks formed a diagram not that different from a flower. "Bonded mechs were quite rare even back before the war, however. Most of the younger generations were sparked all at once by the Cube, without what you would call parents. They had to grow in youth sectors in some of our larger cities."

"Huh." Sam said, looking at me strangely.

"Another, much rarer bond is the twin bond." In the hologram, only the Allspark was left. One spark descended from it, but divided into a pair not long after, with the two new sparks overlapping nearly a third of the way. "When mechlings spring from the same spark. This connection is much greater, as you can see. It allows for a much better awareness of the other. Unless one twin experiences something that disrupts their temporal and spatial synchronization, like interstellar or space bridge travel, and sometimes not even then." I could see Samuel trying to make sense of my addendum, but he did not have enough background information for it. "FTL and space bridge travel, at least as we know them, can only be achieved through means that institute temporary physics paradoxes, like time shifts and folded space, often both. It is why quantum entanglement communicators do not work across galaxies. They _would_ if we spread quantum communicators to such distances at sublight speeds, but that would hardly be practical or sane. Especially since most of them are in our helms."

Samuel shared my amusement and nodded. Unfortunately, the light atmosphere was doomed to experience an early death. "So… That's how you and Megatron…"

"No." If only. Perhaps many things would have gone differently if that had been the case. "The drawback of twin bonds is that the death of one usually results in the death or at least agony-induced insanity for the other."

"Ouch."

"Indeed." The hologram disappeared, but I did not give Samuel time to be disappointed. Perhaps it was premature to share these secrets with a member of a different species after less than a decacycle of knowing them. But if there was ever going to be a human I trusted, he was standing on my upturned servo right now.

Above my palm appeared two distinct sparks. "There is another way to form a brother bond, and it does not rely on the Allspark at all." The sparks slowly gravitated towards each other, until they intersected. "When two mechs or femmes share a deep enough trust and affection, they can initiate a bond deliberately." The connecting node turned from bright blue to vibrant violet. "The result is the same as for a sibling bond, but can feel much more personal and special since it was the result of a conscious choice, as there is no third party to share it with. Mechs and femmes that are romantically attracted have the same option, but they can take things one step further, to sparkmerging. A temporary meld of both Sparks."

I waited for Sam to comment, but he did not. Switching my gaze from the hologram to him, I felt a flash of concern at how pale he suddenly was. "What happens when it's cut?" He asked.

Grimly, I created a hologram of a guillotine, despite knowing that the humor of the depiction would fall flat. The blade of the execution tool fell, slashing straight through the middle of the connection node. The two sparks were literally cut apart, leaving flat scars on the otherwise perfectly spherical exterior. The bright violet bond nodes flared and _withered_ , turning a variety of stale colors before settling on a sickly grey that occasionally flared red, green and black, or a mixture of all three. "In many ways, the bond node is no longer just your own once the overlap is established. Consequently, neither half can survive if the brother-bond is severed, since it relies on the energy and existence of both."

Again silence, and when I beheld the boy, he was even whiter, if that was possible. The eyes he aimed at me were wide and nearly horrified. "So… When I killed Megatron-"

"Dear Primus, Sam. No." The boy closed his mouth with a clank and looked both hopeful and self-recriminating. "Samuel… Megatron severed our bond himself, thousands of years before human civilization as you know it even arose." Although that was not an altogether accurate description. He had not severed it. He had pulled, torn at it, intent on eliminating our connection but still goading me to retaliate, to get a rise out of me. Only to become more enraged as he kept failing. Kept tugging in mad fury at my refusal to be as confrontational as he, until the node was torn out of my own spark in its entirety.

I had created a special wall and drive space in my inner world just so I could section off that wound, and the memory of how it came about.

The only silver lining was that I knew for certain the breaking of our bond was not responsible for Megatron's fall from anger to madness. He did not _have_ a lack in his spark to justify his actions. Unless the node he tore wilted despite my hopes that being _whole_ would prevent degeneration, which was something I tried not to think of too often.

Smokescreen always did make a point of bringing to my attention how I was most definitely _not_ responsible for Megatron's actions. He never did completely get through to me, but over the vorns I was able to push forward because I accepted that my followers shared Smokescreen's belief, not mine. Let it never be said that the Prime disregards the will, needs and beliefs of the many.

Perhaps if the Decepticons had the services of a therapist like we did Smokescreen's, the war would never have escalated to this point.

I was pulled from my ponderings when Sam laid a palm on my chest. By the look on his face, I did not need to compare the severing of a bond to losing a limb without painkillers. He had already deduced as much. He looked on the verge of uttering something, but he changed his mind, turned around and knelt next to his bag.

I watched as he pulled out a switch pen and a hardcover spring notebook. And when he turned to face me again, he was, as humans would say, all business. "Okay." He opened the notebook and began to write at impressive speed. "I'd say I'm sorry I brought it up, but I'd be lying. I'm sorry I brought up bad memories, but at least now I know what my intuition wanted when it led me to ask you all this stuff."

"You speak as though this intuition is not of _your_ mind alone."

"Oh, it is," he did not even look up. "It's just that the wealth of facts it takes into account is too large for my brain alone to be fully aware of it. Though I'm still working on it. Okay!" he put a dot on the page with some force before he turned it and looked up at me. "I can only guess at what sort of people will come over to have this talk with you today. But the fact the President refused to be present shows that my dear government is mistrustful, or at least wary of you and possible after-battle problems."

"I had surmised as much."

It was clear he believed I was only humoring him. "I know I'm probably not the best person to talk to when it comes to dealing with humans, but with Henry…" He trailed off, and I could feel the weight of his sadness wash over me for an instant. "Look, I'm not about to think I'm in a position to give you, of all people, advice. But I'll feel like an ass later if I don't at least speak my mind to you right now-"

"Samuel," he closed his mouth with an audible clank. "I will always listen to what you have to say."

That finally made some of the color in his skin return, if nothing else. "Erm… right. Okay. Well let's see…" He dropped his eyes to the notebook page he once again started writing on. It was an endearing sight really, if somewhat impolite. "Okay. First off, don't let them drag things out with the 'opening' stuff, or it'll make them think they're more important than their inflated heads already feel. Tell them you understand why the President would not be present for the talks, but make sure they know you consider his absence rude, because it _is_. Also, don't bring up religion. Not yours, not ours." He met my gaze and managed not to fidget at my amusement. "Seriously, don't bring up the subject. _At all_. That's one can of worms you won't want to open until the fourth or fifth meeting. Maybe not ever."

"I will take that under advisement." I said graciously.

Undaunted, he forged on. "Right, here's another thing." He took a deep breath. "Do not, under any circumstances, let them realize just how big a disaster I caused for you when I destroyed the Allspark."

I could not keep the frown off my face. I thought we had settled the issue of his role in that outcome. "Samuel. Whatever disaster you feel has happened was not of your making. I thought we had established this."

"That's not the point!" The boy looked at the sky in exasperation before he met my optics again. "Look, what I'm saying is… don't let them get it into their heads that you're refugees or anything."

So this is what he had been so ineffectually building towards. "You cannot ask me to lie, Sam. If ever the trust we built between us is broken, it will not be from our end. And as much as we would deny it, we _are-"_

And with the audacity of the one who insulted Megatron to his face, Samuel Witwicky cut _me_ off before I could continue. "You are the leader of an entire civilization." I went silent in front of the steel that had completely trampled Seymour Simmons preconceptions. His attention was fully on me now, pen and paper becoming distant concerns. "You're the sole chief of an entire race that spread across a planet several times the size of Jupiter, as well as a bunch of others. You're the leader of a military force that's thousands of years more technologically advanced than ours. You're offering your help despite what we did to one of your people, _completely unprovoked_. Even though you each have interstellar transport capabilities and could easily leave us to the remaining Decepticons, who were here _first_. You're the person offering to put everything on hold in order to protect _us_ from the consequences of us playing with artefacts we have no idea about. And from the consequences of performing live experiments on alien beings. And Optimus, no matter how easily you find it to kneel in front of small and squishy, short-lived organics like us, you're a _king_.

"I get that you'd like to settle on Earth, and as far as I'm concerned, that's awesome. But you _cannot_ let the guys coming think they have any sort of power over you, no matter how true or untrue it would be. I don't know how the politicians on Cybertron were, if any, but the ones on Earth are, with very few exceptions, utter _assholes._ They'll try to monitor you, control your movements despite how infantile they are compared to the universe that just opened to them. And if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. And I can easily think of at least 400 people who would instantly agree with me that you deserve better than that!"

I did not reply. I was too stunned.

The boy seemed to sag somewhat, but he was not done yet. "Maybe they shouldn't be blamed completely for it, but unfortunately we have to face the fact that they're not only politicians, but a result of _capitalism_. As messed up as it is, they'll care more about your ability to drive a hard bargain than about your intentions. And some of them will think badly of you if you do have good intentions, while the rest will appreciate it while secretly believing you're just using nice words to hide an agenda."

Primus, it was like having Prowl here.

I watched as the momentum behind Sam's words wound down, finally giving me the chance to speak. "It seems you have less faith in humanity than I." It was not an encouraging thought.

Sam seriously thought over my sobering words. "Not really. It's just that the people you're about to meet _aren't_ the best humanity has to offer."

That I could easily agree with him on. I had met the best humanity had to offer. Half of it perished while thwarting the worst of Megatron's madness, and the other half was in the palm of my hand right now. "I am sorry you lost your mentor so soon after gaining him."

The boy seemed to diminish. "Yeah. I am too."

I would have allowed the silence to linger for a time, but there was one question I had to ask, for the sake of thoroughness if nothing else. "Do you even know any of the people coming?"

Sam snorted. "They're politicians that the president sent in his stead because he didn't trust the word of his own Defense Secretary that you're allies. Even though said Defense Secretary was at ground zero." Sam rubbed his face, managing not to poke his own eyes out with the pen he was still holding. "Tell you what. You go in there hoping for the best. But if they offer you an easily nuke-able island in an ocean somewhere, which would, incidentally, also force you to depend on them for transport, I reserve the right to say I told you so."

I could not help it. I laughed. Even though it sent tremors through my chassis, tremors that disturbed the stability of the servo Sam was standing on, I allowed my amusement to go truly free for once. Far behind me, I sensed Jazz' flare of surprise at the sight I must have made. "Very well, Sam. We have an agreement."

The sunrise had well and truly concluded by that point, so I turned away from it and began to make my way back to the city. Sam seemed more than happy to throw his bag over his torso and climb to sit on my shoulder. At least there was room for one last barb. "I assume you have finished writing my speech."

I expected the boy to flush in embarrassment at his presumptuousness, but instead he blinked and looked at the two items in his hands as if he had forgotten they were there. "Oh! No, I was just multitasking at the time." He sent me a lopsided grin and held out the notebook, opened at the first page. "These are _my_ demands. Wanna see?"

Against my better judgment, I activated the selective zooming capability of my optics and began to read.

Two minutes later, I wished I had a third optic at the back of my head. It would have been nice to see the expression that went with Jazz' bafflement. Not that I could blame him. I did laugh rather rarely.

"-. .-"

It had been five days since the conclusion of the negotiations, and Samuel still had not delivered on his promise to "tell me so." I had yet to decide whether to feel relieved or uneasy because of it.

N.E.S.T. was a promising idea, in theory, especially since Willian Lennox had been put in charge of it. Humans definitely seemed to enjoy their acronyms: Non-biological Extraterrestrial Species Treaty. However, the moment the kind "offer" was made to station the organization on Diego Garcia, an Island in the Indian Ocean, I knew I had lost the implied bet with Sam.

I also knew I had to take control of the negotiations. It was rather fortunate that Sam caused that chaos at the start of the proceedings. The officials protested to his presence of course, to which the boy casually stepped forward and made short work of their arguments as to why he should be kept away. Or even _could_ be kept away, after he had been willing to jump and be thrown off a building by a giant alien warlord, in that order. He even berated the previous US governments for slander against his ancestor and its subsequent cover-up. Then he demanded reparations for the surveillance his family had illegally been under, as well as the abduction of himself and his loved ones who he indirectly held the state responsible for. He could even have claimed he deserved a recompense for essentially saving the world, but he did not. I had to, later, make sure his contribution did not get swept under the rug, as humans would say.

When the politicians tried to (rather patronizingly, even I had to admit) slap him down and say the current administration could not be held responsible (since it had no knowledge of the wrongdoings) Sam bluntly asked them if they really were admitting to the current government being incompetent. After all, they had no idea Sector Seven even existed, despite how massive the operation was. It was tied into every major technology company in the United States of America, and some from other countries. Mentioning the poor judgment of the organization leaders and how foolish half the agents were in carrying actual IDs did not help the image of America as a secure, capable country either.

It concluded with Sam directly telling them he had more faith and trust in aliens than he did in his own country. Then he pushed forward his list of demands, which would restore some of the trust he had in "Uncle Sam." An odd coincidence, those names. Eventually, they capitulated in the face of his relentless and brutally honest logic, since they were too leery of having the boy forcefully removed from the premises while I was standing right behind him, literally and figuratively. Sam got his wish: a new house for his parents, a monetary recompense, and a presidential order that allowed him to take any exam, anywhere and at any time, no matter the level or field of education.

Perhaps it was folly for him to reveal his perfect recall and ability to carry out complex calculus in moments. But with Bumblebee as a guardian, he said he could not think of anything that would make him feel safer than he already did. Simmons tried to make a joke and asked him if he wanted to become a scientist, and Sam flatly said yes.

To start with.

I had to hand it to the boy. His display made certain that I came across as an unfailingly polite and reasonable authority figure in comparison. That did not mean I was any less resolute in my dealings with the delegation, however. A simple play of words that said I would prefer not to have to bring my proposal to nations other than the USA just yet and I effectively took over the negotiations. I suppose it helped that the USA had experience in dealing with monarchs, thanks to the United Kingdom.

And now, here we were, on the lookout point just outside Tranquility, Nevada, the hometown of Sam and his family. Just several dozen miles away from the abandoned nuclear silo that was being renovated in anticipation of our arrival there. N.E.S.T. would have its own base not far away, hidden in the desert from prying eyes. Technically, the soon-to-be installation was closer to the city of Jasper, but I wanted to check for myself the area where Bumblebee and his charge would spend most of their time over the next few months. Of course, as far as the officials were concerned, we Autobots were here to make sure no Decepticon presence remained. Barricade had operated out of this area after all.

Now that the area sweep was complete, we could all finally relax. The war may not necessarily be over, with Starscream still out there and the Nemesis starship unaccounted for, but there would be a reprieve at least.

I had been here for hours, watching the sunset. It had been every bit as magnificent as the sunrise. Now I only had to wait for the stars to become clear, so that I may extrapolate the best direction in which to send my subspace transmission. Not much more to go, but some time still had to pass. I turned my helm to my right. A few yards away was Bumblebee, in his vehicle mode, with Sam and Mikaela sharing an embrace next to the Autobot. I watched as they broke apart and shared a kiss that was much less torrid than what I expected from them after the events of the past week. Even from my distance, I could hear their conversation clearly.

Sam was asking Mikaela to give him a week to get his head in order. Those were his exact words. I suspected they had more meaning than was outwardly apparent, but so were many things on this world. The girl seemed reluctant and rather wary of what that could mean for her, or the both of them, but acquiesced to his request. She did, however, point out that she could not go anywhere without her ride, and he was it. Which meant that Sam would have to "put up with her" for as long as he intended to stay on the lookout tonight.

The boy acknowledged her point in good humor, and they climbed on Bumblebee's hood, to watch the stars much like myself.

At the back of my processor, I was aware of the exact positions held by Jazz, Ratchet and Ironhide. Each of them had found a spot nearby, where they could stretch their joints now that night had fallen and would hide them from the view of most. I pinged all four of my men, and they immediately formed the uplinks that would add their unique holosignatures to my transmission. It was a holographic summary of recent events, with only the identifying features of our human allies edited out for their safety.

With quantum connections impossible to establish without synchronized, active cooperation from both sides, I had to rely on subspace signals. They were much faster than the speed of light, but the universe was large. Still, my transmission would be received. That much I was sure of.

_:With the Allspark gone, we cannot restore life to our planet. But fate has yielded its own reward: a new world to call home. We live among its people now, hiding in plain sight, but watching over them in secret, waiting for the time when we may walk among them. I have witnessed their capacity for courage, and in less than an orn we found allies in some of the greatest of their number. One was lost in crippling Megatron in single combat, the other ended the Decepticon leader's life in defense of mine. And though we are worlds apart, like us, there is more to them than meets the eye. I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars: We are here. We are waiting.:_


	10. Magnum Opus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam notices some things and figures out others.

I didn't even last a day.

Honestly, I didn't really expect to just settle back into the regular high school life after that damn near cataclysmic mess that happened last week. But seriously, being called in front of the principal on the first day back?

Fuck my life.

…

On second thought, never mind. Life was good, even though it had taken a turn for the weird just before Optimus and the others left. Well, the others except Bumblebee. The thought of the yellow Autobot came with a flare of affection I wasn't used to really feeling when it came to anyone other than my folks. Well, and Miles in some measure. I just wished the radio signals 'Bee tapped into weren't so mesmerizing. Seeing dozens of rainbow-colored straight lines and wave pulses twist and twirl all over the place has been making me space out.

It's been making Bumblebee ask about my health with alarming frequency too, since I've been intermittently staring at him and/or into space whenever our "paths crossed." Which meant it happened embarrassingly often. Mikaela would have probably commented on it too, if she were around more. But I'd gotten her to agree to a week of minimal contact between the two of us. There were _things_ I had to sort out.

"Mister Willicky! Pay attention!"

"It's _Witwicky_." The response was so ingrained that I almost didn't register myself giving it, perfect memory or no. Not that the reflex brought me out of my drifting state. No, it was the large and thin smartphone on the desk I was sitting across of that was holding my attention. It was a big, shiny thing. The kind that screamed "overcompensation" in pretty much every culture that is, was and ever will be. But that wasn't what my eyes kept drifting towards.

There was a vertical line of bluish light coming out of the principal's phone.

There were dozens of others, no, hundreds of light strings moving about on the street outside too.

I should've probably been more surprised at suddenly being able to see the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radio signals, and any other wireless tech used by humans. Instead, what baffled me more was me using color-coded _straight lines_ as a virtual representation for them. I knew I wasn't really seeing them with my eyes. I'd physically changed, sure, but not _that_ much, and my eyes still had _some_ limits, and I couldn't see much more than the normal wavelength range. That meant I was perceiving the electromagnetism through other means, and my brain was showing the information as straight lines. Hence my question: What the hell was wrong with me? There was a reason wireless waves were called wireless _waves_.

Phones sure as hell weren't using beamforming yet. Beamforming only worked over pretty short distances. And "beamforming" was kind of a misnomer in itself too, for that matter.

Principal Armadillo was still lecturing me for the "tussle" I got into earlier. Funny name, Armadillo. Fitting too. He actually looked like one of those animals. Big, fat and with such a perfectly ironed and straight-laced suit jacket… Jacket obviously meant as a futile attempt to distract people from how unflattering the man himself actually looked. I wondered if it was a conscious decision or not. Probably not.

I internally sighed. I probably shouldn't be so dismissive and uppity about the guy, since the man I'd chosen as a role model was basically a saint, but man!

"-if this happens again, I'll have 'delinquency' added to your record. Am I understood?"

I blinked. "No."

"Good. Then you're dism-" he broke off when my answer caught up with him. Apparently, disruption to his routine (which consisted of being surrounded by 'yes men') took some time to make sense of. "What did you say!?"

I raised an eyebrow and forced my attention to the matter at hand. Some glyphs drifted in and out of my vision (they still escaped the big, messy psychic ball I'd shoved the All-stuff into) but I could ignore them when they weren't all trying to bury my mind in mixed-up information. "I still don't understand why I'm here."

"You don't understand?!" He sputtered, then restarted his a spiel about me getting into a fight on the main corridors with Trent and his band of jocks. A fight that ended with all of them groaning on the floor and, in two cases, bleeding from their noses.

Admittedly that hadn't been one of my best moments. Originally, my plan was to just get by in high school for a while, to give me time to set up some, er… stuff with the money I needled out of the government. But I started to "see" more of the EM spectrum and couldn't help but stare at all the new strings and colors. Trent and his gang waylaid me while I was trying to focus my attention on a random dude's phone call (just to see if anything would come of it, really).

The night before I returned to school I _had_ devised a plan to get them to back off, but it was supposed to be a lot more subtle than tossing half the football team around like ragdolls in the middle of the crowded hallway. Calculating vectors and redirecting attacks while pre-empting probable follow-ups had been so _simple_. So quickly accomplished, especially with peak human physical ability (well, for my body size anyway). I'd already downed three out of five of the morons by the time I realized how much I'd fubared my plans to not cause a fuss on my first day back.

Still, one thing was true. "I didn't attack them even once." I'd only reacted. Tripped them up and thrown them around instead. It was all about momentum. That two of the guys slammed face-first in the lockers was just unfortunate.

Served them right for wanting to "welcome" me back to school in their predictable way. They even had the nerve to use my new all-blue clothing and sneakers as a pretext. For some reason, I'd developed a real liking for deep cobalt blue after the Mission City disaster. Maybe having it mocked so soon was why I didn't exercise more restraint?

Principal Armadillo, naturally, began to yell at me. His face was turning really red. I was glad. It was a lot better than the puce and purple it had been switching between. I weathered his tirade without outward signs of distress, mostly because I was actually focusing on something else. On mentally gathering the glyphs and script sets floating in front of my eyes and shoving them back into the conceptual ball of All-Stuff they kept leaking out of.

It was a huge, scintillating ball made of words of teal light. Words and phrases held together in the psychic plane by a blue net I'd visualized based on the one I'd used to cart the Cube around. It had a diameter of about 20 meters. I'd spent hours lying on Jazz' backseat just gathering up all the disparate Allspark psy shards. Before that, they'd been nearly overwhelming my attention, making me drift off and trip on every little pebble. Caused random bursts of thoughts and fleeting ideas to flare through my head, even visual flashes of memory of alien times long gone by. All of which made no sense. They were disjointed, chaotic, mixed up with my own awareness of my surroundings, which now stretched for miles.

When I uploaded the Allspark into my psychic body, it caused it to grow to a massive size, covering half of Mission City. It led to a sensory and information overload that rendered me unable to even watch my own steps. That first day before I went into a trance and figured out how to bring some order to my "head" I kept picking up distress as it sent ripples through the astral plane. It was why I knew where to find stranded people. I also felt the feelings flare into outright despair in two cases, before they settled into resignation and disappeared as two men buried under rubble finally died.

It hadn't been a great experience.

My range spanned the whole town of Tranquility now. I was glad the psychic plane was on a higher frequency than the astral. It meant I didn't constantly feel the emotions of everyone. Just really strong ones, or maybe places where crowds gathered and got riled up for whatever reason. On a whim, I focused on Principal Armadillo and tried to see if I had the intuitive ability to change the nature of my immaterial body (since apparently my mental and emotional bodies had been assimilated into my identity already). Maybe all I had to do was change the psionic wavelength to a lower frequency –

Ah. There it was. He was more outraged at me being defiant than at me getting into a fight. I'd already deduced that, but actually sensing the emotion would allow me to identify them in others in the future.

The effort caused a change in my whole outer mind though. Apparently, focusing like this basically pulled the psionic me closer together, to increase the density. It reduced my range (a difference which was negligible, considering how wide it was) but also caused any half-arsed mental constructs to waver if I pulled at my entire mind, instead of just the parts around my subject of interest.

The net holding the All-stuff together tore open on one side, spilling a conceptual, chaotic mess of Cyberglyphics everywhere. I hastily gathered them up (somehow) and patched up the breach. Unfortunately, the change in focus showed on my face, and the principal noticed. Stopping his ongoing diatribe, he looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. I could actually see the vein throbbing on his temple.

Without warning, I suddenly stood up from my seat and walked around the desk. He began to sputter something again, but I tuned him out and kicked the wheeled legs of his rotating office chair. It sent him wheeling away a couple of feet, flailing from the sudden loss of balance. By the time he recovered, I had already typed in a certain web address on his computer and hit enter.

"Mister Witwicky!" He bellowed, shooting out of his chair. "I'll have you expelled for this!"

"Be my guest," I dryly answered, leaving him in a state of gaping shock. Satisfied with the reaction, I turned the monitor back to face him and gestured in the direction of the web page I'd opened. Then I gave him one last look and turned away, walking to the window and squinting at something in the distance, a point beyond the next neighborhood that I couldn't quite see.

For the past minute I'd been feeling a growing ripple of anxiety coming from around one and a half miles away from the school. Some anger and fear were starting to burn through it too, now. I closed my eyes and changed my focus from my immediate surroundings to that point within my psychic range. Just like Henry had said it would be, my immaterial body was a huge sphere with me right in the middle, but it was still of _me._

I doubt he expected it to reach far enough to cover the whole town though. Then again, if the Allspark hadn't broken and basically spilled over into my not-brain, forcing my mind to expand (or maybe adding to it?) I'd probably have a much more reasonable coverage. Maybe a block or two at most.

Oh well.

A mugging. Two attackers and one victim in a secluded alley. Male victim currently fighting back. Probability of success less than 40%. Estimated time to being overwhelmed: 3 minutes. I kept my awareness anchored but stretched it farther until I found what I was looking for. Closest patrolling police vehicle, four blocks away.

Pulling out my cellphone, I sent the police a text message with the emergency and location. That made five anonymous tips in two days. I didn't worry it'd be traced. Even before we got back to Tranquility I'd hacked into the OS and SIM card and removed the number completely, yet still preserved the ability to connect to the phone grid. Being a genius was awesome.

Being aware of all the crime happening in the town wasn't quite as great.

There was one good thing about this though: my psychic body had basically created a bubble of astral space where the emotional garbage and currents caused by the rest of the world didn't reach. I could feel the thickness of it, at the edge of my awareness. Like waves of muck, splashing and vibrating against me, but never seeping in. There was a calm spot in the astral plane, free from the emotional waste of everyone outside, just because I was here. It meant that there was no undetectable outside influence fueling peoples' rage, greed and lust. No way for people to have nightmares. The town had become… calmer. Crime had started to putter down. Soon enough, Tranquility might actually deserve its name.

It didn't eliminate the emotions that actually awoke inside people though. It was too bad that some bad eggs still existed. Like those two muggers who-ah, there were the officers. The policemen got there in time, unlike the first two times I sent tips over. Anger was coming from one, disappointment from both. I guess seeing their fellow men resort to such things was chipping away at their resolve, little by little.

I allowed myself to return to the Principal's office and turned away from the open window. The man was back in his seat, staring wide-eyed at the web page I'd opened. It had taken some fast-talking, but I got Keller and the a-hole brigade to agree to make a dedicated web page for the presidential order about me being allowed to take any exams, anywhere and at any time. It probably wouldn't go over well if I up and demanded that a special exam session be organized just for me, but the order was basically a free ticket for me to drop high school but still come take the final examination. Or skip it entirely and take college entrance exams instead.

Not that I was going to. "The way I see it, we have two options." I finally spoke to him. It made him jerk in place. As if he'd forgotten I was there. "You can keep railing at me, even throw me out of school despite this being a first offense." And the hundredth for the Jock band. I gave Armadillo the same smile I gave Simmons. "I _will_ inform people about how you sided with ungrateful, arrogant bullies instead of the victim though," I waved my phone. "By means of recordings." He glared but said nothing, so I put the cellphone back in my pocket and made one step towards the desk. "And as is clear, I'd be allowed to take the exams anyway. I can't be sure you'd still be head of this school at that point, though. Assholes many officials may be, but they'll definitely crack down on unfair institution leaders if it means maintaining their image."

"Is that a threat?" Bravado of course.

I leaned over the side of the desk and gave him a look that clearly told him what opinion I had of that question. "The second option would be for you to stop turning a blind eye at what Trent and his gang are doing. You must have loads of surveillance cam footage of their doings by now." The high school had them all over the place, gym and stadium included. "Then again, I suppose there's always the third option of turning a blind eye to me _and_ them. I won't take things lightly anymore though. You see, the circumstances that demanded me being an average Joe have expired." Damn, I was using a lot of big words lately.

The principal glared at me, but his skin had gained a milky sort of pallor. "I-I'll be checking this, Witwicky. I'll call every number, and if… if this is a hoax, you're _finished_ , understand!?"

Well, surely the yell was not necessary. "Crystal." I pulled away and headed for the door, not even excusing myself. When I was with my hand on the handle, I turned back one last time. "I'll be looking forward to seeing what sanctions you bring against the bully gang." Then I left.

Just over a week ago, I wouldn't have had the guts or even presence of mind to talk back to the Principal like that. But after staring down Megatron and calling him a coward, Armadillo didn't even register as a worry. Still, I wanted to at least finish my next to last year of high school normally, while I set up some things.

Walking through the corridors, I made sure my attention wouldn't wander too far away from the physical world around me. Not that I needed it for much. School was over, and the only people left were the janitor and whatever students had stayed behind for after-class club activities. Still, I'd drawn a lot of attention earlier in the day, when I walked through the crowded hallways and nimbly avoided everyone with my eyes literally closed. It might have contributed to being picked on by the a-hole brigade, but eh, they deserved a bit of karmic return anyway.

When I finally reached the parking lot, Bumblebee flashed his headlights in greeting. I could practically feel the moment when his semi-anxious waiting gave way to relieved gladness at my presence. The 2007 Camaro had gotten me some really appreciative looks earlier in the day, even though some guys and girls commented on how my blue clothes clashed with the yellow of my car.

I could almost imagine the announcer speaking in the microphone: And the grand prize for total fashion failure goes to Samuel James Witwicky!

Oh woe is me.

Once I was within a foot of the car, the driver's door opened on its own. Ignoring the radio/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/whatever beams coming out of the dashboard, I settled into the driver's seat. "Hey Bumblebee. Sorry to keep you waiting."

"Everything alright?"

I smiled as I went through the motions to start the car and pull out of the driveway. I could tell he was asking about more than the visit to the principal's office. He was the only one who knew about me constantly spacing out. "Better than last week." I wasn't going to lie to him, but that didn't mean I was going to tell him everything weird happening to me. I had some things to confirm first. If certain… elements were as screwed up as I suspected…

Actually, I didn't know how I'd deal with it. Best to take things as they came. "What about you?"

"I've been enjoying the sun. The light of your star is particularly potent for a planet hosting carbon-based organic life forms." His voice sounded nonchalant, but I could sense it was somehow forced. There was some underlying tension there, but I decided not to pry for fear of what I'd find out.

For now. "I was worried you might be getting bored."

"No offense, Sam, but our equivalent of a day is like one of your months. Time does not grate on us the same way it does on you." He paused. "Besides, you gave me access to your virtually held monetary grant from the government. I have used your suggestion to play the stock market as a means to allocate my idle processing power to something useful."

Which meant he'd been making me money as a means to stave off boredom. Awesome! "Wait, how does that even put any strain on your resources?"

"It wouldn't, normally," there was something like smugness coming now. "Still doesn't. But it helps to split the available starting funds into a hundred different investment lines."

I blinked in surprise. Twice. "You're the best friend a guy could have."

Static came from the radio before Bumblebee spoke through his makeshift vocalizer again. "I know."

Definitely smug. "Any updates on the computer delivery?" At my request, Bumblebee had deployed an Autobot visual probe at my parents' house. It was basically a really great camera with the ability to see in 360 degree field of vision, look through solid objects, and view things in several different spectrums. It was cloaked and located on top of the garage. Had audio too.

"Actually yes. The delivery men brought it over 43 minutes after your arrival at school earlier."

"Finally." This way I could finally get to work. My eyes slid from the road to the bag of tricks resting innocently on the passenger seat. I was determined to never leave home without it, even though it didn't hold any weapons anymore. At least I still had the grapple gun, though the laptop and file folder were more important. "What about my folks?"

"Still out. I believe they are looking into ways to get the fountain rebuilt or replaced." I probably shouldn't have been surprised at the trace of embarrassment there. I wondered if Bumblebee realized how adorable he was for feeling embarrassed over the others' blunders. He'd done it with Ironhide and Optimus both, and even Ratchet when I mentioned him yesterday, and how the medic went high on electricity from stumbling into the power lines.

Hilariously enough, it had been Optimus who stomped on the fountain that night, and he didn't have Ratchet's excuse. Talk about situational awareness epic fail.

Speaking of which. "So, what can you tell me about how the others are doing?"

There was a small pause (Bumblebee was either deliberating with himself or consulting with Optimus to know what he was or wasn't allowed to say, or maybe just getting an update of his own?) then answered. "They're still converting the abandoned nuclear silo at the moment. Ratchet is a bit annoyed with how hard it is to actually interface our technology with yours though. Your computers are really slow and stupid, he says."

"I think it's got more to do with the difference in programming languages. The hardware _was_ reverse-engineered from you guys." I sensed a… psychic grimace? Well, he had almost gone through that. Oops. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright." And it really was, apparently. I felt his mood go from uncomfortable to fond immediately. There was also some sort of longing in there, but I couldn't figure out exactly why.

I shelved the matter for later. "Any response to the transmission Optimus sent yet?"

"No, but we do not expect any for some time still."

I hummed in acknowledgment and racked my brain for some new topic. Then it came to me. "Tell me about the Al Simfur temple."

The surprise radiating from Bumblebee was almost palpable, but he complied. He began to speak, painting a clear image of what he used to do before the war. The stream of words continued throughout our journey home, and it seemed that the more I learned, the more glyphs and passages of Cyberglyphic text squeezed out of the blue net above me, filling my vision with fleeting images of the place the 'Bot was describing.

So the Allspark _wanted_ to be made sense of. Insofar as a chaotic mess left over from the destruction of a non-sentient object could want anything at any rate. I didn't know how to feel about that, so once again I shelved the issue for later analysis. Besides, there were more immediate concerns.

Like the computer system I'd ordered. The best money could buy, with two high-end processors and four high-end graphics accelerators. I had _plans_ for it, even though I knew that, if things went as I hoped, I'd quickly grow out of it.

Now all that was left was to see who the government had sent to spy on me and my folks. Keller had been dumbfounded when I included permanent (although still respectful and discreet) surveillance in my list of demands. But I said that I didn't trust the USA enough to not have missed some other clandestine agency like S7, and I wanted there to be government eyes on my parents if nothing else. Just so I could throw it in their face when illegal third parties tried to plant their own people and snoop again.

But that would be looked into later. For now, Bumblebee was still talking, and his enthusiasm in regards to his old life deserved my full attention for as long as he could think of things other than how much he'd lost since then.

"-. .-"

Five hours and forty-two minutes.

That's how long it took me to finally connect to that website Henry had only fleetingly shown me, and whose address was written on the file he left me in the Bag of Tricks. You'd think that it would be a simple enough matter of connecting to the Internet and typing in a web address, but no. The address just had to be written in a language that didn't exist in Windows, or any other operating system, or in the world at large for that matter. I had to use a drawing tablet to input each and every symbol that made up the written form, then hack the hell out of the system files to add the language pack manually. On more than one occasion I ended up inputting a Mechan glyph instead, so I had to go back and replace it. Didn't help that the language was more sophisticated than kanji so I could never be sure if I'd added all the essential characters.

I actually wasn't sure how it worked. Combining symbols somehow awoke feelings and strings of thought in my head, just because I _saw_ the symbols.

For the nth time, I inwardly sighed at the fact that the browser on the laptop had deleted its traffic history automatically upon being closed. I'd even looked through the operating system there, to see if maybe the language pack I needed was installed on it, but no luck. Henry must have used some sort of weird mojo to get the keys to type what he wanted when he accessed that website.

Still, I'd done it. I'd added the written form of whatever language this was to my OS. _After_ I'd manually encrypted the living lights out of all the software of course. Amazing what ideas you could get just from reading a basic manual on binary language and its applications in computing technology. I'd even tracked down the code that provided the secret 3G radio in the CPU with its unrestricted access to everything on my system.

The NSA thought they were so clever. Bah! They wouldn't be spying on _my_ computer any time soon, no sir.

So here I was, at 10 minutes past midnight, looking at a black screen with just two little, long rectangles in the middle. There wasn't even the minimum of text to identify them as the username and password boxes, but it was clear enough that's what they were. Taking a steadying breath, I started typing, in English this time, visualizing the correct box names just because I could.

Username: Archibald

Password: Amundsen

That only left pressing Enter, which I did.

There was a moment when nothing happened, but then he page disappeared and turned into a blank screen, with just the blinking insertion cursor adding some life to the black background. A small, white line, blinking in an out.

Then it moved, and words came forth. :What would you like to talk about?:

All of a sudden, I had to swallow back the urge to cry.

The crazy old man had left behind a link to a cloud-based autonomous Q&A system just to make my life easier. And here I'd been complaining about having to put work into making the language pack. It wasn't as though I had to create the language from scratch!

I did wonder why this didn't open into the website proper. Maybe I had to figure out the command for it? Or maybe I should just ask nicely.

Then again, there was something I did want to know. :What language is this?: I added some of the symbols after the question (which was all English).

To my surprise, the AI (or whatever/whoever it was) on the other end understood normal speech and wrote back the answer immediately. :That is the Written Word.:

I blinked. Twice.

I hesitated, but typed further. :Tell me more about it.:

:The Written Word is the script closest to being able to encompass the meaning and feeling that one who has been enlightened could share through the act of communion. Because of that, it has no spoken form, for no sound can ever contain the Truth all on its own. The enlightened know it, but they do not use it since they can share thought more easily than you find it to breathe.:

So that was why it made me feel strange just to look at the symbols. Even symbols I'd assembled _myself_. Something didn't make sense in that explanation though. :Why invent it at all, then, if it's not used?:

:It is not used much now, but it served well to bestow progressive revelation unto students from Schools of Ascension in the past.:

Okay, my life way starting to gain a distinctly surreal feel, but I was either brave or foolhardy enough to ask. :Schools of Ascension?:

:Atlantis. Babylon. Eden. Irem of a Thousand Pillars.:

My jaw dropped into my lap.

"-. .-"

Well… I suppose life taking a turn for the weird was one way to spend a sleepless night.

For hours I kept asking questions and the website kept answering. I learned more history and related information that I did throughout my entire time at school. After a while, though, I began to touch on certain matters that had been fluttering through my mind ever since the Misson City fiasco. I didn't actually mentioned it directly, but the Allspark had set off some alerts in my "head." When the time neared four in the morning, I got to the point where I finally raised the core issue.

Bumblebee had been concerned when I went to find him at close to five, but he agreed to drive me to the lookout point. He even drove back out of sight when I asked him to, despite his apprehension and confusion. I knew he was still watching over me from afar, like a guardian is supposed to, but as long as I kept my back to him, I should be fine. He couldn't see what I could, know what I did. And if my worries were confirmed, it was best things stayed that way.

The sky had already broken from total, star-studded black. Dawn was in full bloom, and even without having slept I could appreciate the new start it offered. I was glad I didn't need to "sleep" every night. It gave me time to think. To analyze. To consider angles others wouldn't, and to _understand._

The cube could change size and mass without losing anything of itself. That was _metaphysical._

The cube could store an essentially unlimited amount of energy in _raw form_. That was beyond the laws of physics, human and Mechan both. S _upernatural._

The cube could give life to inanimate objects. That was _divine_.

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to relax as the morning wind blew over me, making my new jacked sway. And once my body was relaxed, I allowed my mind to loosen up completely as well.

The Allspark could turn any substance into molecularly programmable metal. No matter how you looked at it, that was _alchemy_.

:Tell me about the Philosopher's Stone.:

It had been such a short query, but with such a long answer. And yet it only confirmed what I'd already deduced through observation.

The blue net I'd thought up tore and dispersed like sand, letting the tightly held multitude of Allspark fragments flood every inch of my insubstantial body. It was chaos. Words, images and memories filling my head all at once. For a moment that seemed to last so much longer, I was blind and deaf to the actual world around me, but I centered myself immediately. Wouldn't want to tip over and fall off the cliff after all.

I knew what this was. I'd done this, shattered the Meaning of a Planet God into countless, useless shards. Whatever order that meddlesome third party had tried to instill in my brain was gone. But that was the conundrum: whatever or whoever they were, they'd tried to anchor everything, solve everything by relying on the physical level. On my _brain_. It implied they had even less knowhow of the spiritual than I did, and that was worrying.

Fortunately, I had an idea.

Forcing my attention to the physical level, I pulled my right hand out of my pocket, the tiny, thin object held firmly between by index finger and thumb. Slowly I raised it up, until it was right in front of my eyes. My gaze never wavered as the sunlight glinted on its shimmering surface, lighting glyphs that reflected on my retinas.

Optimus had taken the Allspark shard from Megatron's chassis, but that didn't mean there wasn't another.

Forcing the spectral glyphs away from my make-believe field of vision, I narrowed my eyes and gazed at the tiny shard. Looked at it, then deeper, beyond the symbols made of other symbols. Beneath the meaning that was only built on more of itself. Further and further I looked, my mind becoming steadier, focused like the lens array of an electron microscope, then sharper than even that. More and more I dug and saw until I understood it _all_.

The shard flared brilliantly in all spectrums, _except_ the one that humans and Autobots could actually see. But I still saw it, and then the tiny thing transcended physical reality and _broke_.

It shattered into a million words and colors, but this time I didn't let chaos run its course. The moment its integrity failed, I clamped my will down on it and instantly memorized the structure. _Knew_ _it_. Saw it for what it was. Got my confirmation that it was what I needed.

If the Allspark was the puzzle, the shard was the solution behind the code. A foundation on which everything else could be rebuilt. The single orderly shard was like a web of spires made of words of light, held together by a honeycomb underlayer. With just this infinitesimal spec of truth from it, I had all I needed for everything to be set _right_.

With all the focus I could muster, I spun the new structure on its axis, the only fragment of the Allspark that still maintained coherent order, until I could see it all in my mind's eye. Then, I released my hold on everything else.

It was like the beginning of a sentence, but whose rest you could instantly deduce. The start of a famous quote you could immediately finish, because you yourself had used it so many, countless times before. Only the process happened a billion times, each feeling like a drawn-out symphony of trumpet sounds whose volume could do nothing but fall. All taking place within a single moment that lasted an eternity and no time at all.

I almost collapsed under the vertigo, but I refused to waver. Instead, I slowly held out my right hand and opened eyes I didn't remember having shut.

The Ghost of the Allspark that only I could see was floating serenely above my hand. Balanced, spinning slowly on a single corner that came into contact with absolutely nothing.

Well, that wasn't quite accurate. It was still part of my "mind." A construct, transferred from a physical shell into one that allowed none of its secrets to stay secret. I knew everything inside it, everything written on it, everything _about it_.

It was magnificent, mighty, beautiful and fundamentally _flawed_.

I released a hopeless breath despite having expected it. This was why it only created insane mutations! It was _corrupted!_ Someone or something had defiled it, and now the only things it could give life to were _perversions_.

Glaring at nothing, I looked at the history contained in the Cube and found _nothing_.

Parts of the history were _missing_. What in the Stars could that mean?

Frowning, I tried a different approach. Someone or something may have removed pieces of history, but the Cube still held a reckoning. Maybe it had-there! The Cube may have been missing parts of the lore, but it _knew_ when those parts had been removed. It didn't know who'd done it, but it knew when it had happened.

I blinked. The hell? It happened several thousand years ago? And the cube had been corrupted for a lot longer than that?

My heart sank at the horrifying realization.

Oh my God! The Allspark had been corrupted since way before Optimus sent it off planet. How the hell had they made it work for them at all?

With a huge effort of willpower, I managed to put an end to that train of thought. It was fruitless, and only promised to upset me.

But the Cube was still in the palm of my hand, and there was one more thing I wanted to try.

With a mental switch, I raised my awareness higher, increased my psychic vibration until I could perfectly see all the Cybergrlyphic threads of fate. Even without a physical shell, the Cube was still directly connected to all the life forms it had sparked.

Good.

Or so I thought.

The first time I'd scryed, I'd done it by accident, but now I knew more. I knew I could choose a point in time to throw my mind towards, and I knew I could do it again and again if I so chose.

So, like the fool I was, I did just that.

Not blinking even once, I mentally grabbed every single one of those connections, linked them all together, chose a point in time specifically seven years in the future, and _looked_.


	11. Cognitive Backlash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam is slapped in the face with the consequences of being rash and foolish.
> 
> Among other things.

The door to my bedroom almost fell off its hinges when I practically fell through it. I didn't notice. How I even knew it had almost been damaged in the first place, I had no idea, considering what a horrid mess my mind was. A flaring, chaotic hive of unseen lights. Currents that whirled at once in every direction, meshing with the dreams of everyone in the neighborhood, twisting them – NO! I pulled at my mind as much as I could, trying to reel it in, to make it _calm_ and _still_. Two houses away, Miles was sleeping in, since it was Saturday. He was turning in his bed, mind reeling as his dreams were hammered by the aftershocks of my stupidity, leaving nothing but nightmares-

I recoiled from the connection with a gasp, hitting my knee against the side of my bed. It should've hurt, but I barely had the chance to notice the pain's absence, then forgot about it. Forgot that I even hit anything in my horror at seeing those images yet again, my audials ringing from the explosion that hurled me out of hiding, out of my self-imposed stasis. I couldn't get my bearings after the strut-rattling crash, medic protocols and orders from Prime clashing with self-defense subroutines in the face of the humans that were attacking me. In the corner of my HUD, an icon showing near-alarmingly low levels of energon kept flashing.

I ignored it. It had been that way for years.

Rage and bitter disappointment warred inside my spark as I tried and failed to shake off the worst of the ballistics and explosive ordinance. They didn't notice or care that I was not retaliating, and no quarter was given even when I was reduced to shouting _Stop, I'm an Autobut –_

I might've screamed when I broke out of the memory that shouldn't have been mine. Memory that never happened at all, but which I was reliving all the same, as though I were someone other than Sam Witwicky. I latched onto that thought like a drowning man. I was Sam Witwicky and I'd just torn a mech's spark out of his chassis. I was Samuel James Witwicky and a ten year-old boy had just woken up screaming across town. I was Samuel James Witwicky and I had no idea what was _happening_ to me.

I extended a trembling hand towards my keyboard. I had no idea why I'd even reached for it. There was just a black command prompt window open on the monitor, nothing else. I wondered how I'd even gotten from my spaceship to this small room, but the thought fizzled under the weight of the urgency that tried and failed to filter forward through the miasma of unachieved despair throbbing in my temples. The black command prompt was important. I _knew_ it, but I didn't know why because _I couldn't remember._

Whirlpools and currents of scattered thoughts were forming all across town with each passing second, spawned by the consequences of those screams and images. The feeling of ice filled my chest, then utter, fiery rage as I saw the recording, witnessed with my own optics as _they slaughtered Ratchet!_

Then everything other than my five, blissfully normal senses faded.

My chest heaved with the effort of drawing in air, and my right shoulder throbbed in pain from falling on it. At some point I must've crashed to the floor of my room. One hand was clutching at my head, the other lying limp on the rug. The wheels of my rotating chair were just inches away from my face, and the seat itself was still spinning from when I'd grabbed it, tried and failed to use it to balance myself. An act which I still didn't remember _._

After my gasps settled some, I took a deep breath, but it did nothing to reduce the sheer terror that had awoken in me by then. Along with the realization that I had no idea how I'd even gotten back home, or what I was doing before. I vaguely recalled standing on the lookout point, doing… something…

What had I been _doing?_

It took me a whole minute to get back to my feet, and even then I could barely hold my balance, putting most of my weight on the desk and arm of my chair. I'd have let myself fall into it if I didn't think I'd fall back to the floor instead as soon as I let go of the precarious balance I'd mustered. It took all my focus not to collapse when I raised a shaking hand and reached for the keyboard, despite not knowing what I was even supposed to type.

When my hand was half an inch from the closest key, the window shut down. Then the monitor turned off without any warning, as did the computer. It surprised me so much that I lost my grip on the chair and staggered backwards. That alone would've been fine, maybe, if not for the pens I'd knocked off the desk earlier. The pens I stepped on.

My heel slipped on them, and the next thing I knew I was falling, barely having enough time to gasp in fright.

Then the world came to a sudden halt.

Before I even realized it, my fall had been stopped. Halted by an arm around my shoulders. A second hand soon came to rest over mine, stopping the shaking of my fingers without any effort whatsoever. As my heartbeat started slowing, I stared in numb shock at the appendage. Then my eyes roved just a bit further, and stopped. Refused to move once they settled on the sight of a brilliant sleeve made of white light.

The mind-shattering terror that had been wrecking me apart faded until it disappeared completely. What memories I still had were scattered, incoherent, but enough to finally let me speak some sense. My voice was hoarse and thick, but it was _mine_. "The thing on the website isn't just a fancy program, is it?"

The arm around my shoulders pulled me up effortlessly, but didn't withdraw. "No. It isn't."

I tried to stem the frantic heartbeats by breathing slowly, but it didn't work. I still didn't look any higher than the hand right in front of me. "The username and password aren't really _my_ username and password, are they?"

The same voice, low and rich answered me. Overflowing with empathy. "No. They aren't."

"I…" I didn't know what to say, so I dropped my head and didn't say anything. I wanted to look at his face and see for myself that man really was right next to me – had an arm around me _–_ but as soon as the idea came, it crumbled, along with everything else that was left of me. I didn't know what it was that had reduced me to this. But I was pretty sure I'd done it to myself, considering the feeling of utter shame that was weighing everything down.

"Oh, you foolish boy." The words were harsh, but his voice wasn't. Not even close. He could've rightly berated me, but he hugged me instead. The world faded into darkness just before robes made of light shielded me from it completely. Light as bright as the sun but not painful to see at all. I was such an idiot. Of course he'd be here. Of course he'd do it, come pick up the pieces of my screw-ups. Hold me up, literally, as I finally gave into the meltdown that had been building up all along. I couldn't even tell if I was sobbing or having an anxiety attack. Odds were it was both, given how I was shaking. I couldn't have told them apart either way. The difference was just one of many things I could no longer remember.

Everything disappeared then. Every last one of the people, those I could still feel, weren't there from one moment to the next. The miasma that had somehow been caused, the dreams of fear, pain and despair were snuffed out. The town of Tranquility itself was suddenly just gone.

With it went the last of my energy. My weak knees would have fallen from under me, but Henry held me tighter. And one instant later, it was like gravity was gone as well.

I don't know how long it took for me to calm down, if I could even claim such a thing now that I wasn't sure I was even sane anymore. Probably not as long as it would've taken if Henry hadn't somehow pushed out the emotional effects of that horrible vision. God, what had _happened?_

"You jumped head-first into clairvoyance without bothering to even learn anything about it beforehand." Even in the middle of a hug, I flinched at the rebuke. "How exactly did that seem like a good idea? Or did you think that stumbling into _one_ vision due to someone _else's_ Empyrean Artefact made you an expert?" I shut my eyes tighter at the words. Even his tone had changed. It wasn't harsh, exactly, but it wasn't merciful either.

"Believe me, I get it." My words were muffled against the fabric of light. "I won't do it again."

"So you're going to bury your head in the sand and hide, is it?" I flinched again, and this time I opened my eyes just so I could blink in confusion. Only white was in my sight, shadowless. "How exactly is precognition itself to blame for you going about it so horribly wrong?"

That… that question wasn't at all what I was expecting. Not that I knew for sure what I was expecting.

My grandpa sighed. I was surprised he still did that. "You went through the trouble of modifying your computer hardware and software until you could connect to the website I left you." The memory arose in my mind, clear as crystal. "You asked me about the Written Word, and I told you." Again, the memory came, even though it had been completely _gone_ before that moment. "You asked me about Ascension, and I told you. You asked me about history, and I told you." With every word, my mind kept coming back to me. "You asked me about the Philosopher's Stone, and I told you. I left _nothing out_."

I finally realized where he was going with this, and it made me wilt.

"Yet when it came to scrying, you immediately assumed you knew everything." I shrunk in shame, but he refused to spare my feelings. Gently but firmly pushing me away until he held me by both shoulders, he made me look up and meet his gaze just by willing it. I don't know how he managed not to look disappointed. "Why, Sam? Why didn't you _ask_?" My head dropped back down. "Or did you think that going mad from the revelation was just a silly concept with no grain of truth in it?" I looked up again and opened my mouth, then closed it. I didn't know what to say. "How do you think so many people got reduced to the level where they aren't even sure they have souls? How do you think beings fall? It's because they want to BE and create _alone_. Because they think they can achieve something greater than everyone else while isolated from the rest. Because they want an accomplishment that is all _theirs_. And when everyone else in the Universe breaks off the constant communion, _as asked_ ; when the ones who want to be _alone_ realize just how much of the knowledge and understanding isn't yet _theirs_ ; when they realize how much less they are than what they had assumed, they decide to go ahead and act on their insufficient understanding and power regardless; even though they can already tell it would not work out as they hope. Because they _assume_ they're in the right." Henry's gaze softened, impossibly. "Because of pride."

"I'm not-, I didn't-." My words broke off. I wasn't sure what I wanted to say.

My grandpa smiled in sad understanding. "You didn't act from pride. I suppose not. It was ignorance." Which wasn't much better. "Which is ultimately where pride comes from."

We both fell quiet then, but I couldn't meet his eyes anymore. Eventually, though, I realized I probably had to say something, and since I had no idea what else I could possible say… "I'm sorry."

"Oh grandson." He lamented what I'd just said. It almost surprised me more than him finally acknowledging our relation. "You're not nearly as sorry as you're about to be."

My eyes snapped up to look at him, and I couldn't help but feel alarmed. What did that mean? Was I going to hell or something?

"Traditional views of hell _are_ fanciful ideas," Henry said evenly. Oddly, it didn't make me feel much better. "Going mad from a revelation is as well, in a sense. But there wouldn't be so many stories involving mad oracles if there wasn't some truth there." His expression turned somber. "Truth like the one I am looking at right now."

I started to feel ill. And cold. Was he saying there was something I still didn't remember? Something… what was I missing?

"And this is the other reason one can fall so easily," Henry picked up on my thoughts. "Because once they lose part of themselves, they often don't realize anything is missing. They don't realize how much less they've become."

With an urgency I barely recognized, I turned my gaze inward, combing everything I could reach of the "me" that wasn't my body. With each second that passed, I grew more and more confused. For all I could tell, I was recovering. Slowly, but recovering. My non-physical self still felt inconsistent, frayed around the edges, but it was settling down.

Henry chose that moment to burst the bubble of my delusion. "There's a reason that true teachers throughout history did their soul-searching and achieved enlightenment away from so-called civilization. Because there are few, if any, currents and unseen creatures feasting on miasma there to cloud their clarity. To hack at their connection to their higher minds." He removed his hands from my shoulders, so that we were both just floating in that great, empty black void. "As I speak, I'm holding back the karma you produced when you gave your whole town nightmares. You're not breaking down any further because there is no chaotic astral plane around to resonate with the miasmic currents of misqualified emotion your stunt generated in everyone else. Because I took you away from there. Otherwise you would have lost everything."

I stared at him, wide-eyed and shocked. "Because of just one vision?"

Henry frowned. "What do you mean, _one_ vision? Did you not grab a hold of over two thousand fate threads at the same time?"

My whole body jerked at the realization, and I almost flashbacked to the shifting perspectives again.

He tilted his head but his voice was as grim as before. "It's always a risk for the unascended who chose to anchor their sense of self in the immaterial. You gained a massive boost in awareness when you decided to exclusively use your physical brain as the sync point. As an antenna, shall we say, rather than leaving even the smallest part to act as a memory repository. Even without you consolidating your identity into something more resilient, that alone would have been fine. If not for you tearing yourself to literal _pieces_ trying to not just see, but _experience_ the future from over two thousand different perspectives _at the same time_."

I couldn't… that wasn't… what did…

He crossed his arms and stared me down. "Pieces that the currents in the astral plane immediately swept away, helped along by the currents you yourself caused when despair and helpless rage invaded the dreams and revelry of everyone else. Emotions that, in your rash action, you made _yours_."

The horror of it was… I looked down and brought my hands to my forehead, one grabbing a fistful of hair.

"I could go on and on. But the explanation can't properly be done with words, and we'll be better served if I transmit it to you through communion." Henry uncrossed his arms and floated closer to me. "But we have a different problem to fix now. Starting with the following question: what did you use that enabled you to see all those threads?"

I blinked up at him. Wasn't the answer obvious? Or did he actually not know? It was impossible. "The Allspark." My incredulity came out in my voice.

Henry nodded once and then made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "That's right. The Allspark." He dropped his hand and leaned forward, until our noses were almost touching. " _Where is it?_ "

It took a moment for his question to set in.

Then the blood drained from my face.

I hung there frozen in complete, abject disbelief. The hands that had been clutching at my hair disentangled and slowly, slowly lowered. But the rest of me was completely still. No, that wasn't quite true. It was quivering as I finally understood how that horrible vision of the future could come to pass. A large part of my reaction to it had been my denial of it even being possible. That the world would turn on the Autobots despite everything that may have happened between then and the present.

A slow, wavering breath left my lungs, then I stopped breathing altogether. Henry was right. It _had_ been pride, even if not the way he'd meant it. The inability to fathom that things could go so wrong, so quickly. I refused to accept the possibility shown in the vision because I couldn't see how it could possibly happen _with me in the picture_. But that was just it: I hadn't been part of that picture at all. That future played out as if I didn't exist and never existed.

As if managing to preserve the Allspark had made absolutely no difference.

My throat clenched as I fought off the urge to heave.

No difference because now it was _lost_.

Oh God…

No difference because I either wasted my life or _lost it_ at some point between today and four years from now-

A hand was suddenly laid on my head, and I could breathe again. "It's going to be alright, grandson."

Just like that, I was completely frozen again, like before only for a totally different reason. But I could feel the bitter laughter welling up within me, on the verge of bursting out. Right, because I'll definitely-

"Samuel." Whatever thought I was about to have didn't happen. Henry basically took my face in both hands and made me look at him straight in the eyes. "I'll _make_ it alright."

My breath stalled. Up close, I could finally see why I couldn't hold his gaze before, why even that heavenly vestment of his didn't intimidate me at all. With its overlapping patterns of meaning, and shifting light strands gliding and meandering even beyond his outline, it was a humbling sight. But compared to those eyes, it was nothing to be intimidated by at all.

The love in them…

It couldn't be described.

"I…" He waited until I figured out what to say. But I _didn't_ know what to say in the face of that. I averted my eyes towards the dark, and Henry withdrew his hands, giving me the space I wanted. Not that it made me feel or think any clearer. What exactly was I supposed to do, when I apparently couldn't even tell how much I'd messed myself up again? Not just myself, but also ruined the best chance there was of the fate of the Autobots finally turning around. Bad enough that I destroyed the Cube in the first place – the airforce might have managed to actually cripple Megatron on their next fly-by – but now…

And here my grandpa was, offering to pick up after my screw-up. Just like he was there to heal me after years of letting the better parts of myself drift away.

Just how much debt was I going to load my soul with before this was over?

"And what's that supposed to mean?" His nearly sharp tone made my head snap towards him. "Do you think this is the part where I demand some sort of sacrifice or oath of service for the help I'm offering? Your firstborn child, perhaps?" Instead of sounding like a joke, it was a reproach. "Did I ask for anything of the sort when I helped you before? We don't work by the 'eye for an eye' adage, and there isn't anything you could offer the Heavens anyway." The man drifted slightly away, as if to look me over. "Humans wrote most of the stories in the Old Testament, Sam, not us. And the people of the time were stuck in such a low level of awareness that the only way they could understand consequences was if they were slapped in the face with them. We could not afford to hold their karma back, ration it to the extent we do now, because they would all have fallen into decadence and hedonism. Many did regardless. They did not have the intellect and capacity for empathy that humanity does now."

I winced. I should've figured that out by now. Maybe I had but it was just another one of many parts of myself that I'd lost. "Sorry, I just thought…" Even now, I could barely find words.

"You thought that it couldn't possibly be a simple matter of someone merely wanting to help. Despite how you yourself have been constantly exhibiting it, you still don't believe in the prevalence of altruism _._ " I blinked at the clear-cut response. "Despite how Gautama, Hermes, Muhammad, Krishna, Zoroaster and even Jesus of Nazareth only ever spread goodwill and wisdom. Despite that the last in that list even went so far as to forgive the world for murdering him." I ducked my head. Talk about embarrassment. "He forgave the world, then chose to stall his own further advancement in order to stick around. To help uplift the ones lingering behind on your planet." The look he sent me then… I still couldn't describe it. "Like _I've_ chosen to do for _you_."

Even more than the confirmation that all those other people had been real, I was blown away by that last revelation. I probably shouldn't have been, but the idea that… And he'd said it so easily, as if it was no big deal that he was basically setting aside Everything with a capital E.

"I suppose the blame doesn't entirely lie with you." His floating posture relaxed somewhat. The patterns of light making up his coat shimmered and reconfigured constantly. "After all, the last few generations of humankind have come up with a truly twisted form of art in regards to the Divine. When we are not built up to be insane, apocalypse-loving, omnicidal egomaniacs, popular media depicts us as little more than self-righteous loan sharks."

I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. It only lasted a second or two, but it happened. The matter of fact way he said it all was beyond hilarious. That it immediately made me think of Stargate only added to the absurdity of the situation.

"Don't even get me started on how flawed the whole premise of that TV show was," Henry said dismissively. I could only gape at his blunt statement. "Slavery on a galactic scale? Really? There's a reason every single society on Earth that practiced slavery either reformed or imploded long before they covered even a quarter of the continents they were on. After a certain point, either a higher form of thought lifts society above the concept, or resentment and hate destroy said society utterly. We always assist with the former. But if our guidance and inspiration are rejected, and if the opportunities we help bring about are mishandled, the alternative always happens, even without any sort of help from us."

There was more to that. I could tell. But I didn't call him out on it, and I wasn't sure I could handle more of the explanation anyway. I was still reeling from the idea that Henry had dedicated his life to helping _me_ , even though he'd already ascended. Which meant he'd more than made up for whatever made him fall in the first place, if he ever had, so he didn't _owe_ me or the world anything.

My grandfather was looking at me intently. "Is it so hard to fathom, grandson? Did _you_ not immediately decide to dedicate your whole existence to your kin from beyond the stars?" It sounded so grand put that way. More than I thought I was up to achieving, the way I was now. "Or are you so proud that you think only you are capable of such selflessness?"

I didn't say anything to that. I never held myself above, well… whatever passed for Heaven, but in regards to everyone else… My mind flashed back to how dismissive and disdainful I'd been of the principal. I winced at the memory. I really wasn't a saint. And yet Henry, Archibald, whatever his name was had not long ago vowed he would make everything alright, because he loved me.

So much for standing up on my own.

"Well, in case you forgot, you cannot, in fact, actually stand on your own two feet at the moment." He knew my every thought. Of course he did, since he was holding my mind together. "And I am not completely blameless in regards to your situation." That admission really surprised me, mostly because I totally disagreed. "No one is perfect so long as they lack true perspective. And I did not possess such a thing yet, back in Hoover Dam, when I told you that higher powers often withheld information and why. That it's safer or fairer for those asking to discover it themselves. If I'd added an addendum about it being especially _important_ to ask in regards to certain things, you might have thought twice before doing what you did."

Yeah, I still totally disagreed. His statement back then had specifically included the words "information we might ask for." And as Henry had so clearly pointed out previously, I hadn't asked the website – hadn't asked HIM – about clairvoyance at all, despite that I should and could have. Now he was giving me the choice between assuming all responsibility and letting him shoulder some of it. He wasn't even trying to trap me, to twist my mind with words. He really was just trying to make my life easier.

Bad enough that I needed his help to stand and think clearly. I wasn't going to run away from my responsibility too. So I told him, even though I knew he was already aware of my resolution. "I'm afraid I'll disagree with you on that last part."

"If that is your decision, Samuel."

Yes. It was. Maybe if I was more self-centered I would wonder why he didn't stop me from having the vision in the first place, but as it was...

Of course, since he knew my mind… "It's true that all points in time exist simultaneously in the eyes of so-called outside observers like us. But that doesn't mean that we know everything that will happen or has happened. New time comes into being all the time, forgive the pun." He was right. Some things really couldn't be properly explained in words. "Scrying reaches outside of time, though. It can foresee, but can't _be_ foreseen, especially since there are a whole lot of methods to perform it. By extension, neither can I predict its effects on the one performing it. So I couldn't anticipate what would happen. Free will is wonderful like that, especially when you watch it at work in others. Imagine my surprise when you went about having a vision the way you did. When I saw what you were doing, I tried the equivalent of a mental knock on the door, then a shout or two, but you were so focused inward that you didn't notice. And I dared not force contact with you after the visions flooded in, or heaven forbid forced you to stop, since free will is one of the primary laws of the cosmos. And there were many ways you could have dealt with the backlash, if only you focused on _that_ instead of on hiding the symptoms of your predicament from Bumblebee on the road back to your house." My memory of that had been lost, but it came rushing back, along with a whole new wave of discomfort. Talk about misplaced priorities. "In the end, I forced my way into the picture when the possibilities of you recovering on your own disappeared."

So he'd respected my attempt to figure things out on my own, including learning from my own mistakes. And apparently one of my biggest mistakes was valuing secrecy above everything and everyone, including myself. Well, I'd learned something alright: not to leap before I look. Thinking back, it was kind of dumb that this bit of common sense escaped me so totally at the time.

If ever there was proof that intelligence and wisdom were different things, this was it.

"You dwell too much on semantics." Henry commented, drifting closer than he'd been throughout our entire conversation in that nothingness. "Also, you are stalling. Why?"

I had no answer. "I honestly don't know." It was the truth. Then again, maybe not. "I guess I just don't…" For some reason, I had the urge to shout. At least I managed to restrain myself, almost. "Look, how is this supposed to be fixable!?" Finally, the problem forced its way into my words. It made me sound nearly desperate, and I hated it. "Because unless you have some way to retrieve… all the Allspark pieces…" I finished very slowly, not believing my sudden change of heart in regards to the odds -wait a minute! "You can!" I blurted.

"I could," the man said, with half a grin. "But why would I do that?"

A feeling of annoyance threatened to rise in me, but I quashed it down.

He sensed it, but didn't comment. Not directly, though his smile did fade. "Beware of false leaders, Sam. Beware of false teachers, for they will swoop in and save you, again and again, until you are so used to it, so used to accepting their advice, their every word, that it renders you incapable of making decisions and achieving anything for yourself, to the point where you are entirely dependent on them. Entirely _controlled_ by them."

Oh.

Scrap it all, did everything have to turn into a lesson with him?

"Because you clearly don't need any. How foolish of me."

I shut my eyes and cringed at the bland reply. No one's sarcasm had never made me feel so bad.

"Grandson." He waited until I opened my eyes and met his again. "I'm not going to do what you suggested. Setting aside the tediousness of reaching into a myriad of different points in time when the Allspark remains still existed, it would be both counterproductive and unnecessary." Gazing at me for a while, he must have eventually seen the sincerity in how I regretted my earlier inner comment. His eyes lost their hardness. "It also wouldn't teach you how to resolve problems like this if they ever arose in the future."

"Ah," I said intelligently. I probably should have seen that coming. "How are we going to get the Allspark back, then?" The dreadful suspicion somehow chose that moment to rear its head. "We _are_ getting it back, aren't we?"

"You have a thing for worst case scenarios, don't you?" I could hear the laughter in his voice, even though he wasn't actually laughing. "I'll respond to the other question. The answer to how we'll be retrieving Primus' Precious Perispiritual Singularity is _scrying_."

I blinked, slowly. "Come again?"

"The simplest type of scrying in fact. You might know it as post-cognition." Henry reached forward and knit the fingers of both hands with mine. "The power of observation can be a marvelous and terrible thing, as you've so very recently learned." He floated closer and I knew he was going to press his forehead against mine. Like back in the Dam, before he… burned to nothing right in front of my eyes. "I won't put you through that again, Sam."

He didn't apologize for doing it in the first place. I don't know why I thought he would. Maybe because Optimus had done it multiple times for multiple things.

Again, he didn't comment on my thoughts. "Are you ready?"

Taking a deep breath (even though I wasn't sure that was really air I was breathing) I nodded. "What exact will we be doing though?"

He already had an answer. "If you still possessed the Allspark, you'd understand the reference better, but humankind has been playing with the theory too. Ever heard of folding space?" My eyes widened in surprise at the apparently random question, but I knew better by now. "That's sort of what we'll be doing." Henry said. "Only rather than space, we'll be folding time instead."

I understood what he said, but I didn't understand what he meant at all.

Henry smiled in understanding. "Just hold on." He spread our arms wide and leaned forward until our brows finally made contact. "It will only take an eternity and no time at all."

It was like the universe suddenly exploded into life. My awareness of my surroundings erupted into a million different flavors as Henry joined his mind with mine. His whole being was suddenly plain to see and feel and hear. Information and energy made form, thought given substance. I didn't know life could even exist at this level of vibration and sheer speed.

In the background, I could feel a thrumming. Steady and periodic, but always unique and harmonious. The heartbeat of the Cosmos.

With a care I didn't think was possible, he… enveloped me, somehow. I hadn't realized what small a part of him the representation of the man in front of me actually was. Now he was practically circling me, gathering the frayed threads of my self together. Like the sky sending the wind to envelop a cloud, to prevent it from dispersing to nothing. I finally understood some of the talk about energy and currents, and it only showed me how little I actually knew.

Almost too soon, I understood something else: I'd messed up my attempt at scrying a lot worse than I thought. Gods above, how many steps had I skipped?

As my grandfather's spirit finally melded with what was left of me, he began to mold and reshape part of my mind, separating a spot without really separating it at all. The wavelength changed slightly in that precise spot, the vibration intensity seemed to go from the irregular mess to almost total stillness. And despite the fact that I wasn't seeing any of it with my eyes, I couldn't think of what else to compare that part of my psychic mind to, other than a mirror.

Or maybe a window.

At that point, Henry's presence thrummed and summoned my white, still brilliant as ever life thread, which he immediately drove right through the center of that mirror.

I gave what passed for a psychic twitch. I didn't know how else to describe it, but Henry's focus wasn't affected at all. He was already searching, combing through himself, then _my_ self, then his attention moved right through the window and beyond, along the length of the life thread until it finally came upon time. We'd just moved from outside time back into it, part-way. What a strange sensation.

Henry's search suddenly stopped. I knew he'd found the point in time he wanted the exact instant he did. Without further delay, he grabbed onto it and pulled _upward_ , causing the life thread to shorten to a single dot in but a moment.

The part of my mind that had become a mirror suddenly reflected a familiar scene. I could see it unfolding and yet not progressing at all, from both a third- and first-person perspective. Me standing upright, arm extended, with a familiar cube floating serenely above the palm of my hand. But it wasn't a mere window. Just like my brain was the nexus for my four (well, two now) lower bodies, the part of my mind that used to be a mirror had become a sync point between me as I was now and me as I was before I tore my mind asunder.

I almost fell out of the communion with Henry due to the shock sparked by the comparison. Grandpa had told me I'd lost a lot of myself, but I hadn't realized just how much it was, and how much of what I was right now was actually patches that Henry had applied. Even with those, I was so much less than I was before I fell.

Because that was what had happened. I had _fallen_.

With a desperation that I suspected was foolish but couldn't stop myself from feeling, I dove right into the synch point, wishing only that I could reflect what I used to be and no longer be so worn and torn.

Or tried to.

Henry's will clamped down on me, bringing me to a total stop. I had literally stopped. I didn't even know how my thoughts could even move enough to realize that fact. My entire self was carefully but firmly guided back away from the mirror, such as it was. Pulled away from the portal to the past I still felt compelled to dive through even then.

Henry exerted his will again. The life thread emerged from the mirror's center. I could read my own life and development backwards the more it came forward. Henry only stopped the process when the section intersecting the folded point in time was the one that chronicled my self as it was in that very moment of my history.

Only then did he let me go. Let me dive into the all too real memory of who I should have been.

It was an urgent transition. I both experienced and witnessed my still unbroken identity swell outward, assimilate everything I'd gone through after the point I jumped head-first myself into those visions. I internalized the understanding of the consequences of that rash maneuver without actually suffering those consequences a second time. My frayed, torn self was reabsorbed by the myself of before, then overtaken and surpassed. I really had become a tiny shard of what I used to be, but now I could be myself again.

When the process was complete, I felt oddly like I had just recovered from amnesia, deafness and blindness all at once, and the Cube was again floating languidly through my mind. The relief made my whole self shudder and sag something fierce, to the point where thinned-down bits and pieces might have broken and drifted off because of inertia, if there even was one. If Henry hadn't been there to practically cradle me, I'm not sure what would've happened.

 _This_ was what I should have done. I should have just turned part of myself into a window, then reached out and… asked the universe to project what I wanted to see. I should've included my life thread if I wanted to actually experience my own future, or someone else's life thread if I wanted to experience _their_ future. Or just made a loop with it around the window, to see it from an objective perspective.

Instead I grabbed all the ones I could see, over two thousands of them, and jumped into the process like… like…

And because I hadn't even bothered designating part of my mind as the window, each of those threads basically commandeered a small part of me to project that vision. And when they all came at once… and when I experienced all those things, all those feelings that didn't even belong to me, my mind shattered. The shards were easy to sweep away by the astral currents after that, especially with the new emissions caused by the nightmares I gave people. Since there was a whole town's worth of population basically within the borders of my mind, their dreams were invaded by the visions and caused a chain reaction.

Finally, I regained the level of understanding I used to have, and I realized that I hadn't been floating in an illusionary black void at all. The only reason I couldn't perceive anything beyond what Henry enabled was because I had gone _blind_.

In more ways than one.

Now, though, I could _see_.

My eyes slowly opened, and I could only look around in something that was so far beyond amazement that I had no term to describe it. Henry had released my hands and drifted a couple of feet away in the interim, but I could barely pay attention to him now. I still felt a lingering connection, since he hadn't completely pulled away from my mind, and I was more than okay with that, but that was a distant secondary concern right now.

And could anyone blame me? We were in space!

I stared wide-eyed at the planet so many thousands of miles below. Shaking my head in disbelief, I pinched my arm. It hurt. Either Henry was simulating physical responses (I know I wasn't!) or he really had teleported the whole me into orbit. Keeping me alive and comfortable as though we hadn't left the atmosphere, or the gravity pull for that matter.

Somehow.

I looked around, studying the planet below, the glimmering water and lights of the large cities. We were on the dark side it seemed. That was the Atlantic ocean down there, and to the right was Africa. The Sahara seemed really… calm and bright on the higher frequencies I could again access.

After a while, I had to look at the starry expanse too, and I did, for an untold amount of time. But eventually I had to look at Henry again. Notice things I hadn't noticed before. Remembered things that had been lost. Like my surprisingly effective attempts at hiding that anything was wrong as Bumblebee drove me home, even though he had enjoyed a perfect view of me suddenly collapsing. Not that it turned out well in the end. Henry was right, I should've focused on reestablishing some inner peace instead. And what kind of excuse was "I fell asleep on my feet" anyway?

There was another thing, right after I started the vision. If not for that strangely convenient gust of wind that made me tip backward instead of forward, I might even have fallen off the lookout cliff to my death when I briefly lost all sense of the outside world.

Henry knew my thoughts, since I hadn't bothered to break off the link even then. "You'd be surprised how many accidents, minor injuries and other near misses would turn out devastating if not for our active monitoring of events."

That made a light bulb go off in my head. "It was you! I knew someone was actively messing with probabilities back in Mission City. Our good luck couldn't have been natural"

Henry grinned. "Sorry to disappoint you, Sam, but that wasn't us."

I knew i-… Wait a minute! "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Huh." Imagine that. I waited to see if he'd say I got punk'd, but he didn't. There goes that theory.

We hung suspended there, for a while. In space. My life was so strange.

And awkward. What was supposed to happen now?

My eyes fell on the unfamiliar, crest-like spiral of sacred geometry that adorned the front of Henry's shirt, or whatever he was wearing under that coat of light that was open at the front. Like the rest of the vestment, the patterns seemed to flow all the time. Now, though, my perception was better than a short time before. I looked deeper, at the patterns beneath the patterns, and the ones below those. It was mesmerizing. They went on forever, but the more I looked, the more flashes I got of times, words and meanings that weren't mine.

Feeling overwhelmed, I shook my head and blinked the spots from my eyes. Or waves, or threads, whatever they were. "Nice duds," I breathed.

Henry looked down at himself, then back at me. "This is the Divine Vestment." I could hear the capitals in my head. He waved an arm and the white sleeve shimmered into countless colors, some of which didn't exist on Earth. "When you alchemically merge your four lower bodies together, and then merge that lower self with the higher one, the so-called Holy Temple of the Spirit, it means you've finally ascended. Incidentally, the process feels a lot like recovering from amnesia as well. When you've accomplished that, The One Above All takes a good look at you." Henry closed his eyes and flared a brilliant gold in his entirety, reliving what must have been a wonderful memory. I felt an echo of that bliss through our connection and it was breathtaking. "He chooses not do it prior to that, you see. If there's one thing He can't to do – I'm making abstraction of the whole "He's allpowerful" thing of course – is stop creating. Where attention goes, energy flows. And since He has an infinite creative capacity, even a single direct glance at you would overcharge your development curve." Henry frowned in melancholy. "Not the best thing that could happen to people still nursing dualistic mindsets. Conflicting points of view. Perversions of the truth that is dichotomy. It would make the opposing parts of the psyche develop instantly and clash until one or both of them crumble." The man smiled somewhat more sadly at that. "It would tear their selves apart."

I winced. That hit too close to home.

"You can't imagine the kind of joy He finds in finally being able to directly behold each of us. When he can welcome you to the Truth, or re-welcome you, he looks at all your accomplishments, then literally weaves them into the Immaculate Concept. The Perfect Image that always waits for you to achieve it in that Higher Self of the Spirit." He held his arms to the side and his clothing seemed to glide through several levels of reality and colors that somehow didn't overlap with the white, but were visible all the same. "The result is this garment, unique for everyone. Although what you can see on me now is just a small part of it."

That I could believe. Now that I was no longer blind, I could tell there was much more to him than met the eye, as Optimus would say.

I wondered how many ages it would take for me to achieve that state.

"And thus it was that the one currently going by the name of Samuel James Witwicky stumbled upon a rather blunt lead-in to a very sensitive topic." The words were completely devoid of the good humor I'd have expected them to carry. It led to an inexplicable feeling of foreboding somehow sparking inside me. Foreboding that Henry sensed. I could feel him brush against me, his own self expanding. Broadened until it enveloped me fully. It felt like the best hug ever. "And that's your intuition guiding this conversation straight to the second big reason why I pulled us into space instead of teleporting us to the Grand Canyon or some random desert." Words said, he raised a hand and pointed at something over my shoulder. "A reason located right in that direction, as perceived by you."

I still felt less than reassured. But I couldn't see what else I could do but look where he pointed. So, trying not to think about how Henry was actually making it possible for me to float and move about well beyond Earth's orbit, I cautiously turned around.

For a moment, I couldn't figure out what he was talking about.

Then the first sunrays emerged from beyond the curvature of the planet, far ahead, taking my breath away for the second time during that surreal experience. I'd watched sunrises before, and I'd even shared part of one with Optimus not so long ago. But none of those experiences could compare to the sight of the far-off star finally appearing from behind the blue sphere where my entire life was supposed to be. It was like a blaze of fire, filling my vision and bathing my body in light that should have burnt me to nothing, or at least irradiated me beyond any hope of health.

And still no harm came to me. I didn't even need to squint because of the brightness. Just like the cold vacuum of space gave me a wide berth. How was Henry _doing_ this?

I was ready to go ahead and ask him when I sensed him start to pull away. Not move from the same place, though he did that to. More like he was… fading. I looked at him with a spark of alarm.

"Don't worry," he cut me off before I could say anything. "Helios just wants to take a good look at you."

What in the world was he-?

The Universe tilted. Everything I could sense shuddered as if dunked in cold water, which made no sense because if anything the space around me seemed to become hot beyond any conceivable limits in the span of a single instant. Gasping for air that shouldn't have existed, I drew a shuddering breath as my senses jerkily reasserted themselves. I became conscious of a simple fact when I finally regained myself: the Universe hadn't moved. _I_ had. Not just moved, but jolted in place from the shock when the spot shared by Henry and I suddenly became engulfed, surrounded by something absolutely colossal.

A mind the size of the entire solar system. No. Bigger than that.

The shock alone was enough to paralyze me, but I received no respite. The attention of that massive presence focused on me in its entirety. The Sun's light decided right then to ignore all observed laws of physics and converge on me, as though focused by a gigantic lens that didn't exist. It rendered me immobile and mute, frozen from a feeling that was so far beyond awe and terror that it couldn't be classified.

"Sam, _calm down_. _"_ The command speared through… whatever the feeling was. "Other than you, nothing changed just now." What did he mean? What did he _mean_? How could he say that when such a massive presence just appeared out of nowhere?

Unless… Unless it hadn't. Unless it had been here all along, only I didn't see or feel even a hint of it previously because I'd gone ahead and shattered my senses before Henry even came for me.

As if my mind had been waiting for that exact conclusion to be drawn, cognizance I didn't think I possessed finally asserted itself and I understood under whose eye I'd fallen. I almost went into shock a second time. "The sun…" I breathed out, unable to believe… I stared, wide-eyed at the brilliant disk so far away. Disk that made up such a shockingly small part of the sun's actual, whole substance. A will that reached so far beyond Pluto that it wasn't even funny. Like a near-boundless spherical ocean which steadily revolved around its own center, tugging the tiny planets along for the ride. "The sun is alive. The sun has a _mind!_ " And it wasn't just one mind, but two. Helios was one, and Vesta was the other. For the first time in my life, I knew what dichotomy really was. I knew what the concept of Ying and Yang symbolized. What the whole idea of marriage was based on, and how much less than this real union it amounted to.

I could see for myself just how true it was that substance was made of energy, and that energy was just an expression of information. So much for the definitions of the three states of existence of matter.

Even gravity didn't really exist. It was all will.

Everything was will.

"Not everything." Henry's calm voice cut through the haze clouding my awareness. "I explained it to you before." But to think that the Sun was… was… "Is it so hard to conceive of such a thing?" Henry asked me, washing away even more of the mind-numbing aftereffects. "Did you already forget what Autobot sparks look like? What _yours_ looks like?"

"But that's just…" My train of thought was derailed when the Sun started… doing something. I felt like I was like standing in the eye of a storm that was all too close, ready to snatch me up and swallow me. The sunbeams converged on me even further than they already had.

"No need to fear, Sam." Henry urged from just outside the conflagration that had enveloped me. "Nothing is being done to you."

It was true. The focal point was just in front of me, but not on or inside me. I wasn't about to be burned or otherwise blasted apart into space dust. Having finally made note of that, I started to relax a bit. I hadn't realized how tense I'd become. I could actually see the light of the sunrays intersecting now, forming something eerily similar to the window in time and space that Henry had shown me how to create from parts of myself. Not that I could understand what was being shown in it. "What's happening?" I had no idea what else I was supposed to do or ask.

I didn't get an answer immediately, at least not a spoken one. But my connection to Henry was still not entirely gone, and it was enough to get an impression of something strangely reminiscent of wistfulness. With more effort than I expected to need, I tore my eyes away from… whatever was being created in front of me. The look on Henry's face wasn't sad, exactly, but it wasn't that overjoyed either. "I was wrong about you, you know?"

"Excuse me?" I didn't even bother to try and hide my unease.

"Remember when I said you'd accepted the spark for whatever reason?" At my hesitant nod, he went on. "That's what I was wrong about. It wasn't the Spark that was accepted. The Spark is _you_. If anything, it was the Spark that accepted the three-fold flame and everything else. I just didn't realize it at the time." His face took on that odd, wry self-deprecating humor that I'd seen on Optimus several times. "Once I ascended, the realization really pulled the rug from beneath all of the grand plans I'd been putting together up to that point. I had these designs of watching over and holding the Perfect Image for you, since I never did do much that was relevant for you while I was alive. But it turns out that I can't do that."

"What do you mean you can't? Why not?" Not that I totally understood what holding the Perfect Image meant, but if Henry wanted to do it, it could only be something good… wait. "Oh God…" He'd said he was wrong about me. "There's still something wrong with me, isn't there?"

"We really should discourage the use of that word more," was grandpa's answer, but he didn't deny. He didn't _deny_. "I wish I could say that your concerns are unwarranted, but I will never lie to you." A weight settled in my stomach, especially when I felt even the massive presence of the sun somehow thrum at my growing distress. Like a wave of warmth flowed through me, just short of being too hot. And then Henry dropped the bomb. "The process I underwent to achieve ascension, the process that pretty much any embodied being should strive to undergo after they become part of the Samsara Cycle for whatever reason… It's not something you'll ever be able to do, because you don't _have_ a higher self to try and strive for."

My breath left me in a single, sudden gust. I was spiritually handicapped. Literally. Handicapped to an even worse extent than I initially thought. At least the first time I had the reassurance that I'd limited myself deliberately, with a specific purpose, and at least it hadn't been permanent. Now… now I couldn't see why I even _had_ any intuition, if there was no higher ideal for me to base my actions on. Odds were what I thought was my intuition was just an upgraded form of what I'd been using to live a normal life before. A background subconscious process of elimination in regards to what options I had available.

All of a sudden, I had the irrational urge to start laughing at the absurdity of everything. Even though it was irrational, even though the state of awareness, the power I'd begun to manifest was orders of magnitude beyond what normal humans exhibited, I felt as if my whole existence was just one big, fat joke. And despite that I knew I should at least ask why Primus had made me so flawed, I couldn't find the inner strength to care.

So I laughed. Laughed in the face of the two, three, however many perfect and massive beings were watching me. It didn't last for long, since I didn't have the strength to keep that up for long either. The revelation did at least clarify one thing though. "At least now I know why I wasn't a factor in any of those visions of the future." Over two thousand points of view and I'd had no bearing on any of them.

I felt a shift in… everything. My grandfather's presence became much more pronounced, almost palpable. Looming and great. "And that's why you should never use visions as a foundation for any plans, or anything at all." Henry suddenly spoke, putting a stop to my inner monologue. The weight in his tone made me wary. So did the narrow-eyed gaze he was sending me. "Visions should never fully be trusted. The farther you look into the future, the less reliable the vision is, no matter how clear the vision appears to your sight. For the simple reason that precognitive scrying takes into account only the mentality of those involved as they are in the moment the scrying is performed. The only way around that is if you can somehow guess what they will do and how they will change, and base your vision on _that_. But that only adds another level of uncertainty to everything."

I stared at him in disbelief. So what, free will really was _free_ will? How did that help _me_ , when I apparently lacked the part of myself that actually enabled me to make the best choices? Now that I could clearly look back on it, my speech to Simmons only worked because what Henry helped do to me only made sure I could think fast enough to wing it instead of tripping over my own ideas. Ideas I'd already built based on the perfect memory of information gathered over a period of years, which was the only reason I could even summon them. More importantly, that I survived the crazy stunts in Mission City had been a literal miracle. If not for whatever manipulated the living lights out of probability, my "grand" plan would have gotten me reduced to a smear on the ground before I even made it off the street. "What should I base my actions on then? You just told me I'm a flawed imitation of what people are supposed to be!"

"Oh grandson." The warmth in that tone was there again… How was I supposed to respond to it? And I'd just yelled at him too. "Why do you put words in my mouth? And why should you suddenly think yourself doomed just because Primus' way of creating life is different from ours?" He was right in front of me. I didn't even remember when he floated so close. "Just because you don't have a higher self to hold the immaculate concept for you doesn't mean others can't do it for you, you know. Or that you're that disadvantaged to begin with. Sure, most people have a higher self, but that doesn't mean they do anything with it."

What did that even mean? The more the talked, the less I understood.

My ancestor looked equal parts reassuring and melancholic. "Most humans are so far removed from their higher minds that we have to ferry down the intuitive ideas from the Immaculate Concept for them. Act as messengers for their intuition, basically. Keep the light at the end of the tunnel visible, or whatever other metaphor you happen to prefer." Henry huffed. It was almost bizarre for someone so far beyond me to exhibit this sort of amused impatience, if that was really what it was. "Some of us work directly with people, but there's a specific office dedicated to this messenger service. You might have heard of it. It's called the Christ." I gaped in sheer incredulity. "Although the overall Perfect Image for humanity is held in trust and constantly visualized and channeled upon the world by the Buddha." My mouth clamped shut, but I couldn't blink. "There _is_ a whole administration in place you know."

I opened my mouth a few times, but I was lost for words in the face of his freespirited attitude in regards to the information he'd just dumped in my lap. "I don't know what… How am I supposed to respond to any of this? I thought you practiced progressive revelation, not the dropping of information bombs! And you said there isn't a higher self for you to ferry messages from to me. So what does all this have to do with me anyway?"

Henry's smile disappeared. "Everything? Nothing? Something? It's as much your decision as it is ours." His look softened. "Can you really not understand? Even though Helios has been so patiently waiting for you to acknowledge him?"

The question startled me. I had completely forgotten about the divine colossus watching us. Watching _me_. The brilliant light that was still bathing me. How my attention could possibly have been entirely diverted from that, I had no idea. I couldn't even see the dark vacuum of space anymore, only light and fire. The reminder made me look away from Henry and into the focal point of the sunrays. I almost didn't recognize what I saw in that marvelous construct, but once I did it my mind almost came to a stop again. It was almost a mirror image of my spark, only brighter, and gold instead of blue. Also, much, much greater, despite that it fit completely inside a sphere of the same size, no wider than the width of my shoulders.

A memory came to me, of my first communion with the divine, back on the road after the car convoy sabotage. When I realized that size ultimately didn't matter. This was the perfect example. "What is that?"

Henry was floating shoulder to shoulder with me now. "Are you really afraid to try and find out for yourself?" He laid a hand on my head. It might have annoyed me, once upon a time, but it didn't. "I always found it fascinating that **T** he **R** eal **Y** ou can be abbreviated as 'TRY.' I know you watched Star Wars, and that Yoda was built up to be some super wise guy. But when he said 'there is no try' he didn't know squat of what he was talking about."

This time, I laughed and there was nothing bitter or hopeless in it. I laughed, and it was good.

Henry wrapped an arm around my shoulders and squeezed once, before floating a few feet away. I knew a hint when I got one, even though I had no idea what would happen if I reached out and touched… whatever that thing was.

It would've probably been enough for me to mentally prod the miniature sun in front of me, but I decided to reach out to it normally. I probably didn't mask my trepidation very well, but I lifted my right hand and extended it forward anyway. There wasn't much else I could do after everything that I'd been told, other than hope for the best.

I really should have known better by then. What I got was so far beyond what I considered "the best" that I couldn't handle it. The feeling of all-encompassing distance and freedom from time weren't exactly new, even if they did completely blow my mind with how far beyond my imagination they both were. Feeling the immense power that Sol represented was stunning and almost inconceivable, but that wasn't what made be recoil either.

What made me stagger backwards was the shock of just how much pure affection was in that small star. Pure affection directed solely at _me_. The unconditional love I'd mostly expected, since Henry had been constantly emitting it throughout this surreal dream. I was ashamed at only now noticing it. The feeling was immediately sidelined though, because unconditional love, spiritual love, Agape, was not the only type that waited for me in that sun.

The star shard that could become my missing half. The half that would always be connected with the rest of Creation, even when I wasn't.

"I'm a Creator," Henry gently spoke from where he was observing everything, still providing that subtle emotional support, like a safety net around my soul. "I could take the office of an Angel too, if I wanted. A protector of Creation." I didn't know he drifted closer until his arm was around me again. "I know what I am not, though. I'm not a Cosmic Being. So I can't hold the Immaculate Concept for the offspring of one, since I don't share that nature, or even the understanding of it. Sol on the other hand…"

I didn't look at him, for the simple reason that my eyes were riveted on the sun right ahead of me. A star that Helios, Sol, Ra, whatever his name was had created from his being but in _my_ image. Or the image of what Primus should have allowed me to start off as, but didn't for some reason I didn't dare try to find out right now. A star that held so much emotion that I wondered how I'd managed not to break down crying. "Storgē…" A greek word. It meant natural affection.

Like that felt by parents for offspring.

I thought I was done with the hindsight, but I was again proven wrong. My perspective had broadened from just that brief contact with a mind so much greater than mine, and that _feeling_ had also done its part. It had soothed a longing I didn't realize I had. I knew the words for the reality of what I was being offered, but I couldn't voice them. They sounded flat and void of inflexion even in my head. That's how much my mind had been blown.

I was being adopted.

Henry pulled his arm back, but let his hand linger on my shoulder. "If you want to be."

The Perfect Image in the small sun changed. Just barely, but it changed. Expanded to reflect my realization, and the new possibility it added to my potential development if I accepted what I was being offered. That meant the Perfect Image reflected me as much as I reflected it. An interesting and also reassuring notion. Free will really was free.

With a deep breath, I straightened from where I'd hunched over myself and gazed at the missing half of me that I could either refuse or accept. Henry floated away yet again, but I was glad he still didn't empathically disconnect. According to everything he had told me, Primus should have, by all accounts, created me as a complete dichotomy himself, but he hadn't. Add to that some things Optimus and the others had revealed, and there was enough foundation for a very disheartening supposition to bloom in my head.

That the Allspark was imperfect to the point where it could be corrupted was just the icing on the cake. "Primus is Cybertron." A foregone realization really. "But is he really a Cosmic Being?" Cosmic Beings were sapient existences that never produced any karma. But they weren't creators either, and yet Primus had created me. Or tried to but botched the job. It made that speech of Henry's about how beings could fall make a lot more sense, though I still hoped I was wrong about what I was assuming about my supposed Creator-God.

Henry looked at me askance. I didn't see him, but I knew. He was within my mind's range, just like I was in his. "He's something along those lines." He paused, and I had the feeling it wasn't for dramatic tension. "He's asleep and disconnected from the rest of us right now. Has been for a while."

Considering that the first sign of me exceeding normal human limitations was a _reduction_ in my need for sleep, that was strange. Getting the confirmation that, in addition to being asleep he was also cut off from everyone else was more than a little alarming. That he was subject to the passage of time at all was the most glaring thing. "If I asked you to explain more, what would you tell me?"

"That you had all the information on the subject and more, but decided to remove it from your being until such a time as you decided to recover the memories of your past lives yourself."

Now _that_ made my head snap in his direction.

His expression turned understanding but no less resolute. "You wanted a clean slate, Sam, and we gave it to you. You already have the means to retrieve the knowledge." I wondered what he meant by that, then the light bulb lit in my head. The life thread! I could trace it back until I passed the point of my birth and scry what I was before in order to remember everything. I could even do it right now.

My mind went back to the recent past, and what the consequences had been for being impulsive. I winced and sent Henry a wry grin of my own for once. "Right. Maybe in a few years."

The smile that lit up my grandfather's face had so much unmasked gladness in it that I didn't know what to think about it. It would probably have been relief if ascension didn't raise someone beyond all sorts of inner tension. I could only assume that his reaction meant my previous lives had been unpleasant.

Either that, or I had been one of the bad guys. I wanted to dismiss the thought, but given how much deception I had already used, and how much I still planned to use…

I looked at the second sun a few feet away. Did I really deserve this special treatment?

"Sam." Henry spoke in response to my bleak thoughts. Of course he did. "We are eternal, and can appear at any time and at any place whenever we wish." I risked a glance in his direction, and he was looking at me with the same love as always. "We give everyone special treatment."

I ducked my head in embarrassment. I'd walked right into that one.

The second sun still hovered before me, and I knew that it had changed again, somehow. I wondered how _I'd_ change if I accepted this. I also knew I'd already made my decision.

Instantly recognizing my acceptance, the sunrays flared. Henry's presence at the back of my mind sent one last reassuring pulse of support before it disappeared entirely, along with the rest of him. It was just me and Helios now. A spec of sand in front of a being the size of the solar system, and I didn't feel afraid at all. If the point was to destroy, dominate or otherwise warp me for some sinister purpose, they wouldn't have had to bother talking at all.

It was still intimidating though.

The mind that filled Space sent waves of warmth against the edge of my awareness. Vibrated against me, but instead of affecting me it was being affected instead. I witnessed in wonder as the Cosmic Being deliberately synced his mind with mine instead of forcing the process to happen in reverse. Each pulse was like a heartbeat, calm and reassuring. I basked in it and let myself relax completely until the wavelengths finally overlapped.

As soon as it happened, my self began to contract. To pull together, _be_ pulled together into a ball with a diameter just a bit wider than I was tall. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, my identity itself pulled inward, like rivers flowing in reverse. I was literally being gathered up in the grasp of a god.

In the background, the heartbeat of the Universe thrummed on.

When it happened, it was sudden. Helios did with me something not too different from what I'd allowed to happen with the puzzle of the Allspark. Everything about me came together perfectly in a single instant. Light that didn't come from the sun erupted from me and the make-believe clothes covering me. It coursed across my surface, shimmering. Forming into something solid, intangible metal colored white, chrome, silver and blue, a shell that was as much armor as it was my skin, but lacking substance. The ghost of someone I might have been, once before, settled over who I was now. I was light overlapping an organic body, both enshrouded in a blazing, blue sun slightly wider than I was tall.

Finally, my identity – ordered and enduring – had been defined.

The second sun still hadn't moved, but it didn't need to. Instead, it tripled in size faster than I'd contracted. Literally went nova, overtaking me and growing even further, until I – body and spirit – was fully enveloped in the mass of golden energy. Unbidden, the memory of Optimus's explanation regarding Creator bonds flashed through my vision, and I realized that I was seeing the origin of it.

It was magnificent.

I intuitively knew I could decide the outcome of this, that I could even limit this to just a spark bond like the ones Optimus had talked about. I knew that even that small a link would mean I would benefit from constant support and encouragement, but it seemed like such a waste to limit myself to that.

So I didn't. I let go of every reservation I still had and left myself wide open. If a drop of water could hold the reflection of the whole universe, I should be able to outpicture at least some of the worth Henry and my divine father-to-be saw in me. God knew I couldn't envision much on my own.

The sheer joy that the Sun projected when he saw my decision was astonishing and humbling to an extraordinary degree. Almost as much as the fact that he didn't do anything more to me afterwards. At all.

What happened next was all me.

While the star of my higher mind had swelled, my spark did the opposite. It quickly condensed until it was small enough to fit in my spark chamber. It was with an unexpected rush of relief that it settled in its proper place, not that I had enough time to contemplate it much, that feeling of rightness. Immediately after, my seven energy centers flared into view, from the base of my spine to the top of my head. They were already in sync, energy constantly moving between them in concentric circles, three of them in total, with the 12-pronged vortex of my heart as the center holding them in place. My soul – a white, round crystal receptacle – lifted from its spot between the heart and the root. It settled in the middle flower itself and waited.

My glimmering metallic frame was the light of my spirit. I finally knew it for what it was. Like the spark of my life had previously done, it filled with power before shrinking down in size. Soon it was small enough that it fit inside my heart with room to spare. Then… a flash was all it took for my spark and my soul to merge together, to become one, single whole preserved inside the ethereal representation of my identity. My Center. It stood straight, dignified and unassailable.

So of _course_ the majestic image would be ruined immediately. The Allspark cube appeared near it all of a sudden – a tiny pinprick with scribbles all over it – and started to languidly spin around my frame like an electron around an atom's core.

I started laughing, and my laughter expressed my own mirth as much as it expressed that of my new Father. Not that I was sure the word was enough to describe it. My entire self, even my higher mind, was thrumming in concert with the rest of Creation as I lived through the results of the random thought that had popped in my mind. That I was probably the poster boy for matryoshka dolls now.

Well, I was a lot of things, wasn't I? Each one stuffed inside the last. A spark inside a frame inside a flower inside a body which, in turn, was just the center of a huge sphere of light, floating in space as if I had been born for it. And even that was cradled by beings that were far more than I.

Heavens, my mind really was a strange place to be wasn't it? Even for me.

The process was finally over. Helios carefully, so carefully began to relax his hold on me. Part of me wished he wouldn't, because I'd never felt better than I did during this communion. Only during the ones I shared with Henry did I feel so safe and accepted.

A wave of affectionate encouragement did away with my concern. It made me feel silly when I realized why. We were connected now. If ever the constant embrace was cut off, it would happen from my end, not His. I could always reach out or pull back. Even come together again with Him – _Them_ , since there were two, and beyond Them countless more – in the future, whenever I retreated to the Inner Dream. The inner world, something that all my kin had within.

Back on the road, after I joined with Henry for the first time, I thought I'd felt totally fine for the first time in my life. I guess I was wrong too, not just Henry. Only now did I really feel fine. Complete.

The sun's light finally released me, and the great star surrounding me, my higher self, flickered out of sight. Returned to Helios, where it would reside, holding the Perfect Image for me until I finally managed to ascend to Heaven, if it ever happened. I knew I wasn't ready, not by a long shot. I didn't even know where to begin projecting my conscious mind into the empyreal orbit of the planet, let alone transport myself here in my entirety, like Henry had done.

As if summoned, my grandfather appeared in front of me, forming out of a cloud-like mass of white light that suddenly manifested. He was looking at me in earnest astonishment, and his statement to me held all the excitement of a little girl that saw a real unicorn for the first time. "I did not see that coming!" Well, all the calm and completely composed excitement I guess.

I knew what he meant. I'd transmuted to a far greater extent than even I expected. I was surprised at the absolute trust I'd been willing to show someone upon our first meeting too, Cosmic Being or no. But Henry trusted him and I trusted Henry like I trusted no one else previously. And now, there was one other being who had my utmost confidence.

A feeling of fond understanding swelled in my chest. It was amazing. Empathy had nothing on this. I could definitely understand why Optimus would mourn the loss of such a connection, even disregarding the agonizing pain that a cut or torn bond left behind. At least I didn't have to worry about that.

"No you don't," Henry confirmed my thoughts, smiling contentedly. "I'm very happy for you, Samuel." It was true. I could feel it, now that he'd allowed our minds to touch again. I took the risk and glanced outward for a moment, to see if…

Yes. He was still far more than I was. Easily encompassed me even now.

"What happens next?" Was I finally going back? And once I did, what outward effects should I expect?

"Your development curve probably won't be affected in the near term," Henry told me, rubbing his chin. "It's the very immediate future that you should worry about."

My eyebrows jumped up. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, not much," Henry made a dismissive wave with his light-clothed arm. "Just that you didn't manage to totally fool Bumblebee into believing you were alright after your collapse and subsequent ride home." He drifted closer and poked me in the forehead with two fingers. "Which led to him transforming into his robot mode and sneaking over to the side of the yard that your room faces towards." He pushed my forehead backwards until I was teetering dangerously. Or would have been teetering if there was any gravity to be… concerned… about…

Wait a minute.

Henry grinned when he saw the understanding bloom on my face. "Meaning that he was watching you through the window when you slipped and started to fall backwards."

"Now hold on a bit, we can talk about this!"

Or not.

Henry gave one final flick, and the world fell away in a kaleidoscope of colors. Next thing I knew, I was falling, flailing as my heel slipped on the pens I'd knocked over earlier, when I was barely holding myself together. The world moved at a crawl around me, giving me more than enough time to regain my wits enough to think OHSHI-

A pained, high-pitched shriek burst out of my chest when I hit the ground and struck my elbow's funny bone dead on. And yes, I knew it was actually the ulnar nerve, thank you very much!

Rubbing at my elbow like there was nothing more important in the world, I painfully crawled to my feet, hissing all the way. I did all I could do keep the annoyance alive, but my endeavor was doomed to failure. There was no way I could ever stay mad at Henry, especially with the constant stream of encouraging faith that flowed into me from my new Father in Spirit, but man!

As I rubbed my elbow, my thoughts turned to my mom and dad, who were still asleep in their bedroom across the hall, despite the racket I'd just caused. I could sense them, breathing lightly. Their minds were calm and their dreams serene. I didn't know what to do about them, what I should tell them, if anything. Or why.

Right. An issue for another time. Right now, there was something more important to take care of.

Since my tumble had taken me close enough to the window, I whirled on my feet and shoved the curtain out of the way. Bumblebee was so startled by my face suddenly being just inches away from his that he recoiled backwards so far that he actually fell on his skidplate…

… and managed to get tangled in the power lines that had only recently been replaced.

I stared in horrified fascination as the yellow autobot futilely tried to get away from the discharging, broken electrical wire. Then at him giving up the effort and soaking the energy until the fuses kicked in and the power cut off. The scout pushed himself up. Or, rather, tried. He didn't really get the left foot to move right, so he had to try again. A couple of times. Then he gave up and just… crashed on his back. "Wow, that was tingly!" He mumbled. "You gotta try that… gotta try…"

I couldn't help it. I fell against the window frame and started laughing and laughing until there was no breath left in my lungs. Then I took a wheezing breath and started laughing again.

"-. .-"

After five full minutes during which I laughed myself to tears, it took another twenty to coax Bumblebee into the garage. Thank providence that it was still early morning and no one was awake yet. No one nearby to see anyhow. Thank providence for the tall trees along the outer fence too.

Hopefully he won't be too sad when he wakes up and realizes that the oilcake was a lie.

I didn't manage to get the Autobot to transform into his altmode, and I didn't want to think what would happen if he tried it while he was high. I did succeed in putting him in stasis though. Well, actually I applied all my skills in the art of bullshitting and persuaded him to open up a panel right below the back of his helm. After that, while he was lying on the garage floor and being deliriously silly, I used a French key to flip a certain circuit and voila! Sleeping Autobot.

The circuits would reset themselves in an hour or so, by my reckoning. The overcharge should be done by then as well.

Returning to my room, I closed the door behind me and walked over to my desk, where the shiny new computer I'd owned for less than a day was waiting for me. If there was anything that the disaster of all visions showed me, it was that I wasn't going to amount to much if I didn't start to act more proactively as soon as possible.

Sitting in my chair, I crossed my arms and let my head drop until my chin rested on my chest. First thing was first.

I turned my attention inward and found myself in my inner world for the first time ever. It looked indistinct, since I hadn't decided to give it a specific theme or shape. And I rather liked the view, of pure brightness everywhere. There was one thing though, in that endless expanse of white. Far above me was a gigantic yellow sun, bright beyond words and wrapped in solar winds that never stayed in place for long. The blaze of glory that was the connection to my new foster Father.

I wondered how long it would take to lose the "foster."

I wanted to fly up there and dive into its core more than I could say, but that wasn't why I had come here. Looking away, I chose a random spot of that inner dream and tugged at it until it was right in front of me. I wasted no time in pulling at it, stretching and modulating its vibration level until it mirrored the feel of the one Henry had shown me how to create, not that much earlier. Screen made, I mentally reached into it, then beyond. I didn't drive my life thread through it, or my fate thread, or the fate thread of anyone connected to me through the Allspark or otherwise. There was no need. I did do something else though. I traced my life thread back up to the point when I had just reformed the Cube, and used my mentality of back _then_ as foundation for the vision I was about to summon.

That done, I chose the same point, seven years in the future, and _looked_. Finally saw that vision through.

Nothing had changed.

Except myself. I could watch it properly now, without breaking apart. Without actually experiencing any of what I saw, or wavering in my focus the slightest bit, despite how bleak that future seemed. Ratchet being attacked by self-deceived humans, then murdered by a deluded fool. Optimus crippled and reduced to hiding and relying on the help of a struggling inventor and two teenagers while on the run from _humans_. All because he, like all other autobots, was low on energon and munitions to an absurd degree.

No wonder Lockdown managed to take him down in one shot. Optimus never managed to operate at even thirty percent of his current capacity during that mess. That itself was less than half of what he should be able to do.

The disaster caused by KSI and Cemetery Wind was even worse. Not just because of the path they were going on, or how loathsome a certain group of humans were. No, it was what that company had been doing to transformers. Worse than war crimes. Megatron, or whatever he called himself then, was the only thing that didn't come as such a huge surprise. But even that was only a distant concern to the reaction that Optimus had when he saw for himself what had become of his old friend.

They slaughtered Ratchet. His reaction mirrored my thoughts, save for one thing. What would have become a roaring rampage of revenge – explosive, vengeful and completely justified – nonetheless tapered off and fizzled. Burnt itself out before anything really came of it. Simply because, by that point, Optimus was just so _tired_ that he couldn't put much feeling in anything anymore.

And then there was everything else that happened… Some might say things turned out well, but that wasn't really true.

I released the mental hold on the mirror, allowing it to disperse into the rest of my mind. What did Henry say? That I shouldn't use visions of the future as a foundation for my plans and actions?

It was a good thing that my existing plans allowed room for alterations then.

The fiery star high above suddenly projected one, bright ray of sunlight upon me. I basked in it and the encouragement it provided before I left my inner dream and returned to the waking world. Only around ten minutes had passed, even though I'd been keeping the scrying going for at least two hours. I'd have to test the limits of the time perception later.

Now, I had something else in mind. With a mental flick, I had all the fate threads directly connected to me (not including the Allspark) become visible to my sight. All five Autobots were there, curiously enough. But in the dozen or so links to humans, the one I wanted wasn't available. Which meant that we had no direct stake in each other's lives right now.

Not that it was such an obstacle. Once again I traced my life thread backwards. That time in Hoover Dam when Bumblebee was allowed to finally shrink the Allspark down to size would have to do. Yes, there it was.

I grabbed the silver thread and pulled my end of it into the present. That done, I cast my sight outward, following it. My vision flashed through dozens of places as my mind reached beyond itself, a string that extended across several states, until finally it alighted on the person I was seeking. He was sitting at his computer. Why was I not surprised? On a whim, I scryed his recent past. A day in the life of mister double S would give me an idea of how to approach him with my proposition.

I would have blinked if my farsight relied on actual eyes. A deli? Really? Owned by his mother?

This was going to be a hell of a lot easier than I expected.

Back in my room, I'd already booted my computer and launched the command prompt window. It was a good think that Bumblebee's episode had only taken out the outgoing electrical lines providing energy to the surveillance system and garage. With the "eye" I was keeping on my quarry acting as an anchor for my awareness, I projected more of my mind on that end, until I encompassed his entire house. Or corner shop, or whatever. The wireless signals stuck out like nightlights. The fact he was working on his website added to the ease of my upcoming task.

After cracking my knuckles, I reached forward and hit a key. Then another and another until my fingers were a literal blur on my keyboard. I hacked into my own computer, green code scrolling at high speed across my screen as I removed all traces of an origin point. Then I proceeded to hack the network and the Internet nodes themselves. All the while I focused the part of my mind surrounding my own computer on reading the electromagnetic and electrical signals as they happened. With each line of code, I understood more and more of how these machines worked. How software came together, and how to manipulate the living lights out of it with the power of 1 and 0.

Then it happened. The rate at which I hacked every connection node and firewall in my way exceeded the speed at which I typed characters on my keyboard. Simply because I wasn't only typing characters anymore. Now that I was focused enough, I could just insert the data straight into the system memory, or skip straight to the network and Internet cables themselves. I didn't even need Wi-Fi to piggyback on.

How convenient.

I leaned back and let my arms hang off the arms of my chair. Before me, the green code continued to scroll merrily as I ran my signal through every gateway I could find via the World Wide Web. It wasn't really necessary. I could just send more or my mind to the other end of my connection to the guy and piggyback on the Wi-Fi signal of his router to hack his PC directly and contact him that way. But why do that, when it was so much more karmically fair to make him pull his hair out as he tried and failed to trace my transmission?

Now what should I type? For that matter, what should I call myself? All hackers needed a codename after all. It would have to be something that actually fit me. My primary trait then. What was it? Ingenious? No, I was only almost ingenious. Wise? Again, almost, and I was being generous with myself. Kind beyond words? Maybe, but still nothing compared to certain beings out there. What was left? Even when it came to my sense of humor, I was only almost funny. My attempt at taking Bumblebee by surprise was supposed to be an innocent joke, but it ended with him getting drunk on electricity.

Almost almost almost. I was almost… something.

I grinned.

Having redirected my uplink through a hundred gateways, I finally hit the computer I was aiming for. His firewalls were good, but I had a mind better than any computer, and the technical knowhow of a technological race thousands of years more advanced than ours. I barely had to put effort into circumventing them.

I didn't expect him to actually squawk though, when the command prompt window popped up in his screen, forcefully shutting down the console interface he was writing, along with his whole browser. Woe is him I guess.

I leaned forward to type manually, for no reason other than the fact that I felt like it. _:Quasimodo to Robo-Warrior. Come in Robo-Warrior.:_

 _:what the hell?:_ Wow, he liked his punctuation marks, didn't he? _:who is this? HOW DID YOU GET PAST MY SECURITY!?:_

 _:OH MY GOD, THE ALLCAPS!:_ Well, they really were an eyesore. _:But to answer your question, I did it easily. I am brilliant after all. Well, almost.:_

Back in New York City, Seymour Simmons started cursing up a storm. He knew a lot of vulgar words too. Wow, those were some good ones. I'd have to remember them. Good thing my memory was perfect. Too bad his mother banged on the wall and told him to keep it down unless he wanted to man the deli alone the next day. With a snarl, the guy settled down. _:who the hell are you? and what do you want?:_ Simmons was literally spitting invectives under his breath. He also seemed pretty sure that he'd been hacked by one of the robots. He seemed certain they were out to get him.

As if Optimus and the others had nothing better to do than pick on a man who'd just lost everything he'd worked for. _:You know me.:_ Well, mostly. _:I'd like to think you even understand me, Simmons. Truly understand.:_

I saw him freeze in my mind's eye when he recognized the reference to my words, to back when I crushed his entire world view. His eyes got so wide that they looked fit to burst out of his head. _:no way… kid, is that you?:_

_:You do realize that the key to plausible deniability is the plausibility, right?:_

Simmons was mouthing silently now, disbelieving. He managed to get over it relatively fast, but the confusion left behind wasn't much better. _:how are you doing this?:_

_:It's called hacking.:_

Back in his room, Simmons produced an inarticulate scream (muffled of course) and said it was too early for this kind of shit. Those were his exact words. Apparently, that he was already awake and working on his GiantEffingRobots website had no bearing on the situation. _:what do you want from me now, kid?:_

So he did blame me for him losing his job, credibility and, well, everything. Oh well, that was hardly unexpected. _:You yourself are pretty good at hacking, right? And at the rest of the stuff that made you a spy?:_

_:what's your point, kid?:_

_:I have a job for you if you want it.:_ The bafflement on his face was so hilarious that I started chuckling. Good thing no one was there to see me and ask what the hell was so funny about binary. _:Off the record, obviously.:_

_:now I get it, this is a prank isn't it?:_

_:Nope.:_ My hands flew over the keys easily. _:Way I see it, the Autobots will be revealed eventually. When it happens, either the world will gasp in awe, shit will really hit the fan, or anything in between. I intend for the best possible outcome to happen, but to do that I need two things I can't get on my own, at least not fast enough: money and influence.:_

_:and you want me to help you gain influence? You do realize you basically ruined all of mine, right?:_

I focused my mind on his, to try and get a sense of his emotions. He seemed bewildered mostly, and really skeptical, but there was no evidence that he hated me on principle. Time to dangle the bait. _:I already have all the influence I need with the Autobots. As for our own people, they will fall in line once I begin to inspire awe in the common man through my sheer brilliance.:_

Back in New York, Simmons rolled his eyes. He was really good at it, I noted. Better than Miles for sure. _:so what, then? how do you expect me to make you money, oh immeasurably modest one? after the mess in mission city, I was lucky I got a pension! Unless you want me to launder cash from banks or something, in which case you really are as crazy as I've been saying you are.:_

The guy really was hilarious, wasn't he? If only he used capitals where they should be used. Alas. _:Of course not. There are far more disreputable sources of money that are just begging to be stolen back and put to work in the service of the people who actually deserve it.:_

I almost had him. There was no way he would be satisfied working in a deli for the rest of his life and we both knew it. He didn't type anything back though.

So I did. _:how would you like to financially ruin every single human trafficking ring that exists in Europe?:_

I had him with that one. I didn't even need to feel his mind to know when he decided to actually give my offer some serious thought. I could see it from how the fate thread finally established a direct connection between us again. _:Let me guess… to start with?:_

The smile that bloomed on my face was every bit as unmerciful as his. _:to start with.:_

_:kid, you're barking mad. but as much as I never thought I'd say this, I like the way you think.:_


	12. Asmegir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Mikaela finally come to a decision. The immediate consequence is unexpected.
> 
> And rather self-aware.

The lookout point on the outskirts of Tranquility was a marvelous thing. It was just tall enough for the panorama to easily engulf the whole town and the horizon beyond, but that wasn't the most important detail. What really counted was that it didn't face east or west, meaning that you could easily enjoy both the sunrise and the sunset from atop it. All it took was changing the direction you were facing and voila! Perfect romantic setting. Not that conventional romance was what I had in mind. I doubted I'd ever have something like it in mind again, after how much my horizons had been broadened.

Emphasis on conventional.

Standing there with my hands in my pockets, I looked the town that was going about its business in the distance. Not that I was using my eyes for that much as far as the townsfolk were concerned. The part of my mind keeping an eye on the emotional hotspots took precedence over that. Sure, my identity and memories were safely solidified and given form now – as much as Aether could be solid anyway – but my psychic field was just as wide as ever. And my discernment had only grown.

I'd tapped into the police radios and emergency phone lines to send an anonymous tip about ongoing crimes only once since I left home, a couple of hours back. I guess the nightmares of last night put people off being assholes for today at least, even if most of them probably couldn't remember anything but the lingering feelings upon awakening. Or maybe they're just taking this Sunday off? Then again, Tranquility wasn't such a large town, so there wasn't much room for crime like in the big cities.

Well, making abstractions of _my_ crimes of course.

With my talk with Simmons having ended on a positive note, he agreed to start the process of setting up a (dummy for now) corporation. Buying a few warehouses around the nation, including one in Tranquility itself, would be the first step. Primary and secondary accounts, as well as some phantom ones, would only be possible once I really started running rampant through the illegal money of criminal organizations. After that I could finally start to put things in place. All the while, I'd let Bumblebee play the stock market with my legal money and use that for my "official" purchases as a cover.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell Bumblebee anything. I was glad the yellow autobot was still essentially unconscious at home, considering what I was planning to do. I'd already decided not to reveal anything to the Autobots, for the sake of deniability and because if I messed anything up I didn't want anything to be traced back to them. It really was all pretty illegal, and their situation was problematic enough as it was. Realistically, I knew I'd probably have no choice at some point, but for now I couldn't see any good way around the secrecy, unless I made him agree to keep it a secret from Optimus.

Yeah. Never gonna happen.

Bringing Optimus in the loop was an option, sure. But revealing one thing would lead to another and then another and then I'd have to let him know what I learned about the Allspark and Primus. Sure, I myself didn't understand the implications of most of the stuff I'd been told, but it was enough to know the Cube had been corrupted all along.

How exactly do you tell someone that they fought a multi-millennial war for nothing? Less than nothing? No. Better not to tell him anything until I figured out what exactly was wrong with the Cube and fixed it.

No pressure there.

One of my attention hot spots pinged and I turned a bit more of my mind to the source: Mikaela's house / automobile repair shop. She was finally heading for me. Earlier on the phone she seemed a bit neutral when I told her I'd meet her here instead of picking her up on the way. But she'll get over it when she sees the distinct lack of my "car" and that I'd walked here the same as her. Her bike had been totaled because of Barricade and the patchwork she'd done had broken down Friday, as luck would have it.

I'd come over on foot. It took over an hour, but that was okay. I suspected Bee would wake up by the time we're through here and come pick us both up. Whether or not we both got out of the car in the same place afterwards was still up in the air though.

It took Mikaela around twenty minutes to reach the lookout. I spent the time brushing against her mental and emotional emissions, such as they were. There were some really odd readings there, mixtures of anxiousness, indecision and some underlying annoyance, probably at how I'd essentially blown her off for days. Yeah, I'd gotten her to agree in advance for a week of minimal interaction, but it had left our situation really ambiguous.

On a whim, I scryed her recent past and grimaced. Since she was closer to me empathically than most other people she was more in tune with my mind when it shattered, so she experienced a bigger than usual part of my vision as a nightmare. Fortunately dreams didn't leave lasting scars, but she still had the so-called fortune of seeing a rather nasty part of the mind trip. The one where Lockdown brought Optimus down with the biggest cheap shot ever.

And from what I could guess, the memory didn't fade from her mind when she woke up.

She was at the far side of the lookout now, leaving the main road and coming up the beaten dirt path. Her speed barely slowed, despite the progressively steeper incline. She must be really impatient. No surprise there.

I didn't turn when she finally reached the top. I didn't really move at all, except to blink from time to time as I watched the sun go down, throwing my sight further and further the more I delayed blinking. It was like traveling through a tunnel of fire and light. When Mikaela finally arrived, she stood for a moment and I felt her flash of irritation. And confusion, but still mostly irritation.

"I've gained a much greater appreciation for the Sun after last night," I heard myself saying, without turning around or otherwise moving. "I can't really explain it in words though."

Some irritation remained, but not as much as before. Mikaela's presence hovered there, several meters away, but then she made some internal decision and walked up to me until she was standing to my right, though a fair few feet away. I was slightly amazed by how her immaterial side felt. She seemed to be in much better balance than I was before last week's mess. Not that it was a shock, considering that at the time I was messed up in a way few people, if any, ever were. The difference was still more than a little surprising though.

My own psychic presence kept the whole town insulated from the normal astral mess, but it didn't purge what was already inside the perispirits of people. There was a sort of interaction, like sunlight melting ice slower than it actually regenerated, and that was it. Even if there had been more than a week available for that to have any lasting effect, what happened last night had set everything back by miles.

And yet she felt better to my sixth sense than she did two days ago at school, despite last night's nightmare fuel.

"Where's Bumblebee?" She asked.

I finally turned my head to behold her and pulled my hands out of my pockets. She was wearing one of her usual pairs of shorts and a white tank top. I was surprised to notice I was just a tiny bit taller than her now. "Unconscious in the garage." She blinked, nonplussed by my easy answer and I turned my eyes towards the sun again. "He got tangled in the back yard's main power line and suffered a high so bad that I had to put him into stasis. I had to walk here."

Mikaela didn't answer immediately. "You put him to sleep..." When I only nodded, she shook her head. "You really are the strangest boy I have ever met."

"That could mean a number of things," I couldn't help saying. "Though at least it somewhat implies I'm not as lame as I used to be." Mikaela's expression faltered for a moment, even though I didn't mean it as a direct insult. Although, objectively speaking, she did have it coming, considering how many years we'd shared the same class without her even realizing I was there until I told her so, when I gave her a ride home just before the alien mess. "No need to deny it. We both know I was as unremarkable as they came back then. Though I'd like to think that's no longer the case."

The look she gave me was almost surprising in its intensity. "You _have_ changed."

I raised an eyebrow. "I take it we're still making abstraction of my whole evolutionary leap?"

That earned me an eye roll, though she turned serious quickly again. "I guess it hasn't gone away then?"

I couldn't help but laugh, although my mood faded as swiftly as hers. "Did you expect it to?"

"Not really, no," she admitted. I couldn't read her mood for some reason. Maybe she couldn't decide how to feel about it herself.

"… Do you wish it had?"

"No." It was true. That much I could tell.

She almost asked or said something else, but didn't. Instead, she turned away and looked at the sun, which was almost near the horizon now.

Well, best we get to the chase. "I'm sorry for giving you nightmares last night."

The speed with which her head turned towards me would have been funny in any other situation. "Say again?"

"I did something really stupid." I kept my tone even, stuffing my hands back in my pockets. I felt some sort of surprise from her, then – wait a minute – shock? Understanding flashed through my mind as her shock gave way to anger and I cut her off before she could jump to conclusions. "I didn't try to spy on you or your dreams or whatever." Either my words or my tone gave her pause, though her eyes still narrowed at me. I idly noted the pale blue of her irises stood out more than usual. Probably because the western sky was starting to turn orange. "In my great wisdom, I decided to try and have a vision of the future, but went about it all wrong and it backfired. And since my mind basically stretches across the entirety of Tranquility and a bit beyond, well…" I shrugged.

Mikaela stared at me, mouth ajar.

"It won't happen again, really."

She tried to speak but reconsidered again and just stared at me.

It was actually a bit uncomfortable. "Would you at least believe that it was an accident?"

"Forget that!" She burst. "Rewind a bit. I thought I just heard you say that your mind stretches across the whole town."

"Yes."

Her breath came out in a disbelieving gust. "And before that, you said you tried to have a vision of the future, because apparently that's a thing you can do now."

"Yep, that's what I said."

Her mouth moved, but no more words came out. After a few moments, she let her head hang back as far as it could and she sighed in an odd mix of resignation and exasperation. When she finally met my eyes again, she looked annoyed more than anything else. "Somehow, I feel like I'm not quite as surprised as I should be."

I winced but, well, in for a penny in for a pound I guess. "I don't suppose this is the best time to say I contacted Simmons and asked him to set up a dummy corporation with money I plan to steal from human trafficking rings, terrorists and corrupt politicians in addition to whatever other criminals I can think of?"

There was dead silence. Up until a cricket decided to start trilling even though their time to come out of the earthworks was still a good two hours away.

She was outright gaping now.

"It's going to be totally safe, I promise." A beat. "Well, not for them." I knew I wasn't doing my case any favors, but it was best to just throw everything out there from the get go. Also, the look on her face was hilarious. "All it's gonna take is a lit-" I cut myself off when a feeling of anxiety and panic exploded deep in the eastern most district of the town. Pushing aside my current train of thought, I strode past Mikaela until I was on the edge of the slope. My phone was already in my hand by the time I came to a stop and I didn't even need to look at it to call up the message draft I'd prepared for these situations. All I had to do was determine the nature of the crime being perpetrated, complete the SMS and send –

My mood instantly darkened as I finally focused enough to figure out what was happening. A message wasn't going to cut it. Speed dial to the police it was.

"Sam, what's going on?"

I raised my free hand to call for Mikaela's silence, not looking away from the far-off point where the emotional whirlwind was. The 911 call picked up on the second ring and I didn't even wait for the person there to say anything. "Attempted rape in progress at 27th Applejack road. Assailant is a blond haired high school post-graduate with athletic constitution. Appears inebriated." The classic jock, I thought with an internal scoff. I sensed more than heard Mikaela start behind me, but I ignored it. "Don't bother knocking on the door. Girl's parents are apparently away and the jock smelled an opportunity. No, I won't give you my name, can you put any more effort into wasting the little time that girl still has?! Send a damn police car over there!" I closed the call in disgust and switched to a glare as I focused more of my attention on what was happening there.

Good thing too, because my mind's eye cleared just in time for me to "see" the girl pull her wrist out of the drunk jock's grip and run up the stairs to her room in a panic. Feeling distinctly unmerciful at the sight, I waited until the would-be rapist was half-way up before I slammed his mind with mine. It didn't do much, just made his sight blur a tiny bit more than it already was because of his drinking binge, but it did make him misjudge the distance between his hand and the railing.

His already pitiable balance lost, he stumbled and fell, rolling down the stairs and ending up in a groaning, gasping heap on the floor, with one arm dislocated at the shoulder and an ankle sprained badly enough that he'd be limping for weeks.

I winced openly. I didn't even remotely expect the injuries to turn out so serious. But I suppose it made sense. I've basically been reducing the karma people have to cope with by keeping the astral miasma away. But if someone chose to be an ass despite that reprieve that lets them think clearly and logically, then it makes sense that the karmic backlash would be worse than otherwise.

I grimly beheld the next couple of minutes. The girl was my age and had managed to lock herself in her room. It wouldn't have stopped the guy, even in his drunk state, given his build and the flimsiness of that door frame. He was also older than her by a fair bit, probably having graduated high school a while ago. That he was still in town meant he didn't make it to college. What a surprise.

I didn't recognize him. No surprise there, since the area of town was a good enough hint he went to a different high school than mine. The neighborhood wasn't bad, though. It was basically a suburb itself, with no blocks in sight. Not the sort of area where crimes like this happened, so how did those two get involved? Rubbing my chin, I closed my eyes and scryed their recent future. I stopped when my backwards viewing reached early morning. Apparently those two were together and had attended a party thrown by the guy's friends. Not the best crowd, but not the worst either.

They both fell asleep on random furniture around six in the morning, and woke up hungover late in the day. The guy spent some more time drinking with the guys again before the girl finally insisted on going home, even if she had to do it on her own. He decided to accompany her there, but the latest alcohol reached his brain on the cab ride over, and when he realized the girl's parents were away for whatever reason, he decided it was finally time he helped her "get rid of the insecurities holding their relationship back."

I frowned once the vision ended – it had only taken a couple of seconds – and focused again on the trouble spot. Not the best way for the two to learn prudence and restraint, but hopefully they would derive a lesson from what life had just put them through.

Four minutes or so later, the police car finally arrived. The guy was just hopping one-legged down the stairs outside when he saw it. He tried to run (well, limp) through the back yard, but one of the officers caught up to him fast and apprehended him none too gently, even making fun at his expense for getting his ass kicked by a girl. Those were the cop's exact words.

I shook my head and settled back on the lookout with a sigh. "Such a waste."

All things considered, Mikaela sounded a lot less off balance than she could have been when she finally found her voice. "…I guess the future isn't the only thing you can see now, huh?"

"That's putting it lightly." I turned around. "I'm basically insulating the town from, well, the bullshit thoughts and emotions of the rest of the world. But that doesn't do anything to the tomfoolery and depravity that the people here are capable of on their own. Whenever it gets above a certain point, I can't help but feel it." I pocketed my cellphone and closed the distance between us, though not completely. "Now you know why I've been texting so much more than normal." I'd been doing it a lot even at school, whenever a trouble spot like this one caught my attention.

Mikaela stared at me. "I'm torn between being amazed at all this and weeping over the loss of my normal, perfectly understandable life."

I met her gaze for a while and ignored the internal pang that accompanied my next words. "Well, the perfectly normal life isn't out of the question if that's what you want more."

She'd started to rub her forehead but looked at me sharply. "What's that supposed to mean?"

What, did she think I was planning to erase her memory or something? That was one of the worst applications of power ever, unless it was honestly requested. I didn't even know how to go about it. "Well, it's not like anyone other than us and a few other people know about that mess. You can still walk away from all this."

"Like it's that simple."

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I know it would suck to be me if you walked away, since I do want to share everything with you." Some sort of emotion flashed between us, and it wasn't just surprise. "But it's a decision that needs to be made in the next couple of days. Right now if possible."

Mikaela could have glared at me, but she only seemed thoughtful. "And why's that?"

"One: You can make the decision without outside influence, since Bumblebee isn't here to try and make sure 'we' pull through this. Don't raise your eyebrows, you know full well that he pulls off the best puppy eyes even though he barely has any moving face parts to speak of." She huffed, but at least I could feel I'd amused her. "Two: the government spy I asked for will arrive this week at some point, along with the very likely agents from whatever Sector Seven knockoffs happen to be running around in the world. You'll be flagged as person of interest if we're seen together regularly afterwards."

She crossed her arms. "As if I'm not one already."

I crossed my arms too. "More of a person of interest than you already are, then. Besides, as far as they're concerned relationships that start under extreme circumstances don't work out. We were barely an item by the time that mess was over with. No one would bat an eye if we're relegated to distant acquaintances after this. You'd be off the list of direct supervision quickly that way."

She was seriously considering the implications. Good. Especially with her soon-to-be paroled dad.

"Three," I tipped off the third finger. "Plausible deniability will be our only defense for a good while, and my life is going to become very dangerous. Also, very, very illegal. I can't even begin to describe in words just how surreal my situation is already." There were no proper words to depict what it meant to be the son of the Sun God. It sounded absurd even in my head. "I needed a week just to wrap my head around the stuff that happened to me back at the start of that barely averted disaster, and a lot of other things happened since then, and will continue to happen."

"You sound like you're honestly trying to warn me off, but you don't really want me to take the offer."

"Nope, I don't."

She just looked at me for a while, then her posture sagged a bit and she sighed for once herself. "Well, at least now I know why you asked for a week of time out." Mikaela pressed both her palms against her eyes. A token effort to relieve some pressure. "I did some thinking of my own." She let her hands drop to her sides and gave me a wry look. "But I thought my hand with cars would carry me through high school and that we'd be able to postpone the big stuff for the two years of that we still have left."

Oh, how I understood that. "That had been part of my initial plans too. Unfortunately, stuff happened and I can't afford to wait. That doesn't mean I'm dropping school though. So there's nothing that says your plans have to change."

But now, she was already shaking her head. "I appreciate the thought, but I don't want to be a dead weight, and from what I can see that's exactly what I'll be even if I try my best to keep up with you."

I laughed. And when I saw how perplexed and offended she was at my reaction I laughed harder. After half a minute or so I got it under control though. I threw my arms wide. "Oh, my dear lady!" I chuckled. "Is that what you think will happen? I get that you feel like you have stuff to make up for, even with your record erased. And you probably swindled people out of their justly earned goods in a past life or something. Otherwise you probably wouldn't have been born to a car thief." I ignored her affronted look. "But there's no law that says you can't decide to change your lot in life mid-through. Not if you apply yourself well enough."

I could tell she didn't believe me.

So I narrowed my eyes, slowly lifted my right hand until it was around shoulder level and reached out.

A white thread of light appeared between my fingers, and it instantly arrested Mikaela's full attention. "This is your life thread." I slowly twisted it around my index and middle fingers. "I can use it to see your past. But it can also be used to look forward at what might be. So, based on your mentality as it is right now, and only your _current_ level of skill…" I closed my eyes and cast my sight into the realm of possibilities, making sure to never stray from the path led by the white string. "You'll graduate high school and immediately get hired as a luxury car exhibit overseer who moonlights as a designer and tuning mechanic." I had to pause as the possibilities branched out. "There are some other potential jobs, but in all of them you'll do better than 'well' just by being your current, hypercompetent self." Opening my eyes, I met hers and considered mentally connecting and broadcasting some of what I saw into her surface awareness. I decided against it, since it might cause her well-honed paranoia to react unfortunately.

My girlfriend (because we hadn't broken up yet) blinked at me. Repeatedly. "That's… good to know?"

Rolling my eyes, I dropped the thread and allowed it to fade. "It's not the best you deserve and you know it." I decided to stop beating around the bush and approached her. "It's also not the best you can accomplish, regardless of what you think." I stopped when I was just within arm's reach of her. "Let's just put all our cards on the table, shall we?"

She didn't back down, but she didn't just say yes either. "Depends on what you mean."

"Answer me these two questions, honestly. First, how much do you trust me?"

The answer didn't come immediately. "More than I trust anyone else." Her tone wasn't totally in line with the words though. "That's not saying much though."

I nodded, expecting it. "… Do you _love_ me?"

This answer took even longer in coming. "… I don't know."

I nodded again. "Then you know yourself better than I knew myself up until last week." I could tell my answer had surprised her, but I wasn't done. "Do you want to find out, though?" I slowly reached for her as I closed that last step. "The answer to both those questions?" Knitting my fingers with hers, I slowly began to lift our entwined hands up and out. "Beyond any shade of doubt?" Our faces were close enough now that I could lean forward and connect our foreheads together, but I wasn't going to do it of only my own accord.

I expected her to stiffen at least a little bit, but she didn't. Instead, she mirrored my movements and smiled ruefully. "Please tell me this isn't the point where you transfer knowledge to me with a kiss. I was able to handle everything else, but that cliché will take things too far even for me."

I shook my head with short laugh. "Nothing so primal." The mood tapered off as I touched on a topic I'd almost forgotten. "I've found that kisses aren't all they're cracked up to be." That made me realize something else. "Actually, if we go through with what I'm planning, it might put you off sex too." There was a beat of quiet when even the crickets shut up. "For the rest of your life." A beat. "Maybe."

If a tumbleweed happened to roll by us during the next minute, it would have been completely appropriate.

Mikaela gave me a flat look. As close as we were standing, almost nose to nose, it was particularly piercing. "Are you implying that if we try to make a relationship work as things are right now… it'll fail because you'll never be able to satisfy me as a woman?"

Well, she could be damn blunt when she wanted to be. Then again, so could I. "You don't need to make it sound as if me being capable of initiating a higher form of union is such a crime you know. Which is to say, the answer to your question is no. However, if we commune now and do break up afterwards, there will be little chance of anything… carnal… enabling you to feel fulfillment ever again."

She blinked. "Well… good to know my options are so clear." She said dryly. "… What about you though? Do you…?" She tilted her head, waiting.

"Trust isn't an issue," I said immediately. Our intertwined hands were between us now. "But no. I don't know if I love you either. I think I will, though, if I get to _really_ know you. And even if eros doesn't turn out to be part of the package, well…" I shrugged and gave an honest smile. "I want to know you anyway."

I let that sink in while thinking that both of us must have changed a lot in just over a week. There was no way either of us would have even thought of having any sort of philosophic discussion before, let alone one like this. Then again, Mikaela _had_ been there for most of the weird parts after the first one. Most importantly, she was there when Henry got all transcendental on me and went nova in the middle of the demolished dam facility. If not for that, Mikaela probably would have thought I was going nuts on her now.

I was discovering new reasons to be grateful to my twice-great grandfather all the time.

I sensed his pulse of affectionate candor the same moment Mikaela made the internal decision to go ahead with what I was proposing. All that was left was to close that last half step, push our hands outward and rest my forehead against hers.

My immaterial self that had till then covered the whole town pulled away from the surrounding world. Contracted to the point where it was barely wider than I was tall. Enough to surround the two of us in a cocoon as my mind melded with hers. The outer layer became a shell, and for a moment we both were completely cut off from the rest of everything, then the cocoon exploded like the start of a new universe.

Well, maybe that was laying it a bit thick, but there was nothing I could think of that could comprise the feeling of being born anew.

Back when I bared myself in front of my Father, I did it because I saw that it was pointless to try to hide anything from one who already knew all of me. This time was different, and I knew I could decide the outcome as easily as I could dictate what Mikaela could see of me. But it was also true that I'd been honest earlier, when I said I wanted to share everything with her.

So I exposed everything again.

I felt Mikaela's surprise, clear as daylight. She knew everything I thought. That was the point of this. I was honestly comfortable with everything I was. Now it was up to her, whether or not she decided to feel the same.

The heartbeat of the universe thrummed on.

She didn't know what to do next, I realized in a flash of insight. The thought summoned everything I ever understood about the nature of things, and the meaning of life. With our minds joined, that knowledge would transfer easily. Still, knowledge didn't necessarily mean understanding, and there was an easy way to help bring that about.

"Looking" at her, I found the thread linking her mind to the higher self that, unlike me, she never lacked. Then I surrounded it with my mind and pulled in all directions, widening it into a great, streaming channel of light as I traced along its length, higher and higher and higher-

Awareness filled me the moment it did her, and everything just stalled.

 _This_ was what Henry meant when he said the ultimate potential set us apart. That the Perfect Image for Creators and Cosmic Beings was fundamentally different. Why he couldn't hold the immaculate concept for me, because he didn't understand it.

But I _did_. I did because she did, in that instant when she understood Everything with a capital E as well as I did. That she had as much control as I did over the outcome of this.

On the lookout point outside Tranquility, a fleeting flash of golden light went unnoticed in the afterglow of the sunset.

"-. .-"

The effects of our spiritual joining in the higher planes was much more obvious. Not that it could have been otherwise, considering that everyone on that level was all-seeing. Besides, a two-sided star going nova was pretty hard to miss, even if we did go back to being two people right after. Then again, since every moment was the same as an eternity when time didn't apply, that meant that our connection lasted a very long "time" indeed.

Whether or not we loved each other was answered early on during that connection – we did – and the issue of trust was put to rest just as fast – it went without saying. I also knew everything worth knowing about Mikaela's life, as she did mine, though most of her awareness would fade, to be available to her in full only when she was dreaming, not restricted by the limits of her physical mind. Speaking of her life, she actually had planned it out before being born, sort of. Like everyone else did. This was supposed to be a normal, karma-balancing incarnation for her. Now, though, with me in the picture she could decide on a new course, which she had. I was glad.

The constant exchange actually didn't end even after Mikaela had her breakthrough. Our selves eventually consolidated into something more familiar to the both of us, two human-shaped minds embracing and floating in the orbit of planet Earth. We could have traded words at that point, each syllable lasting an eternity and no time at all, but we didn't. We knew everything the other was thinking and feeling anyway.

I suppose I should have expected something unexpected to happen. Then again, it wouldn't have been unexpected if I'd expected it.

I felt fond amusement swelling in my chest, so I put an end to that tangent.

Our foreheads were still connected, and our heart vortices overlapped, slowly spinning, spiraling in the exact, same rhythm. Constantly sending a stream of energy to the other, since we only wanted to share what made us, well, us. And since sharing was giving, we ended up giving enough of ourselves and our energy that the combined substance was enough for a thought to form in both our minds at the same time. That if we didn't want to stop sharing our lives with the other, then all we had to do was create something that belonged to both of us in equal measure.

It was a good idea, but one that neither of us acted on. We simply didn't have the chance. In a flare of initiative that was free from both our direction for the slightest of moments, the mass of energy and thought that had gathered between us became aware. Aware of us and aware of _itself_. Enough to make an independent decision.

Mikaela and I barely had time to be shocked by what that meant when time and space witnessed a second flash of light and insight. It manifested as a starburst even brighter and grander than our first one, although much smaller, but bright and strong enough to force us apart regardless. Or at least push away our make-believe bodies, since our connection never wavered despite the utter surprise of what had just happened and, more importantly, what had just appeared between us.

Were it possible to be dumbfounded by anything when you were aware of so much, I was sure that was what would have happened. As it was, I only blinked in surprise at the small, palm-sized star hovering there, half-way between Mikaela and I. It was colored blue, mostly, but with golden solar winds and flares. And instead of the normal star corona, it had a shroud of white cloud-like light emanating from it. Gliding and drifting around it like gossamer.

I looked at Mikaela, who was looking back at me with the same amazement I felt. She didn't even register the fact that we were in orbit around Earth. Her thoughts had well and truly been arrested by what we'd just made happen.

Not that I was much better. The miracle of life was rapturous enough when you were merely witnessing it, but to actually make it happen…

I turned my sight back on the little star and drifted close, reached for it as slowly as I could. I couldn't know how it would react to sudden movements, assuming it even perceived anything the way we did. The little star turned to me without actually turning and began to brush the palm of my hand and my fingers with those adorable little light strands surrounding it. My heart melted at what I could feel coming from it. It was so _curious_.

Seeing my success, Mikaela drifted closer as well and soon she was basically holding the little guy in the palm of her hand.

That was when things changed again. Mikaela didn't feel it immediately but I did, since my range was a lot greater than the part of us that overlapped by that point. A fourth mind was suddenly there. I recognized it immediately, and by the time Mikaela became aware of my thoughts there already was a white, brilliant mass of cloudlight taking form within our range.

The hands took shape first and settled on our respective shoulders. "Right-o." Henry spoke, no by your leave no nothing. "Do brace yourselves, hmm?"

That was when everything changed _again_ , without any outward evidence of the fact. For one, eternal instant Mikaela and I were quintessentially aware of the fact that the entirety of existence had its attention focused on us-

No.

Not us.

The life we'd just created sprung alight, expanded a hundredfold upon itself, again and again. Before we could go from one thought to the next it had turned from a tiny pinprick into a huge celestial existence larger than the Earth. It enveloped us and the space around us in its mighty glow, and I barely had time to notice I couldn't even begin to grasp its magnificence before a will out of this plane took hold of and lifted it. Pulled it out of sight and out of phase until it was an existence beyond my understanding. Then it exceeded my perception altogether.

All that was left behind was a strong, bright crystal cord that on one end was connected to some point beyond the space and time I knew, and on the other end was anchored in the small being we were holding up, being that had gone utterly still.

The moment passed…

… and my poor firstborn did the only thing he could do when faced with something that had come so completely out of left field. He panicked and bolted straight for the safest spot it could think of.

I rocked back as a literal shooting star drove through the vortex of my heart and disappeared from sight. I felt a very real impact the moment it came to a halt against my spark chamber and curled up in the protective embrace of my frame, quivering from the fright of what had just happened. Bringing a hand to my chest, I looked down and smiled as empathy kicked in. The poor thing didn't understand what had just happened to him. Didn't realize that it was about as wonderful as anything could get.

Well, that problem could easily enough be remedied over time.

Unfortunately, my loving ruminations took so long that Henry was already gone by the time I looked up. Also, I had been so absorbed in the task of comforting the little guy that I didn't notice our minds' return to the lookout.

And by the feel of it, grandpa hadn't explained anything to Mikaela.

Wonderful.

It was going to be a long walk home.

"-. .-"

"So I didn't imagine it," Mikaela said as I walked with her, holding one arm around her. She had her head on my shoulder. "We actually…" She gesticulated helplessly.

The smile hadn't left my face and didn't seem like it was going to any time soon. "Yep."

Helpless gesticulation again, though at least she had a specific point she was pointing at. The middle of my sternum to be exact. "And he's really…"

"Mhm."

"I never thought I'd ever say something like this while being serious," she brought a hand to her forehead. "The whole super-star part was… God."

"God taking a direct look at him and thereby creating his higher self by a straightforward application of infinite creative capacity." I sent yet another reassuring pulse of affection out of my spark chamber and the little star seemed to calm down. A little bit. Marginally. He still refused to leave the arms of my frame though, staying latched onto my chest plating like a particularly stubborn barnacle. I sent my Father my most sincere gratitude for shaping my identity the way He had. It sure came in handy now, to put it lightly. "That way, our little star will always have something to strive towards if he wants to, without actually being forced through any changes. Free will and all that."

Even leaning on me, Mikaela seemed coiled with tension. "And that guy? Your grandpa, why was he there?"

"To act as a shield for the two of us," I told her. "Since we have… issues, it would not have been good to our health to be subjected to that kind of active scrutiny. I'll explain later. It would take too long right now." I threw her a sideways glance. "Unless you're willing to wait until we make a repeat performance of what we did today."

Mikaela laughed weakly but changed the subject. "You know, I never planned to have a kid, especially without getting married."

"Technically, we were married for an eternity up there," I said easily, ignoring the flash of... whatever it was that Mikaela felt at my words. "Besides, this isn't the same and you know it."

"Yeah," some of the tension seemed to drain from her. "It feels a lot better than I expected being a mother would feel."

"You're sensing the reflected love I'm getting from the little star." I frowned. "We really need a name for him."

"Him?" She finally lifted her head from my shoulder. "How are you sure it's not a girl?"

"Like genders even apply to empyreal superplanar beings like him?" I shot back. "Besides, I'm not sexist. English is a sexist language."

She scoffed but didn't say anything. Instead, she laid a hand on my chest and closed her eyes, letting her head rest on my shoulder again as we walked along on the sidewalk. I felt the little star relax a bit in my hug as the presence of his other creator was finally within reaching distance.

He still refused to unglue from my chassis though. I hugged him closer.

Yeah, so I liked hugging adorable things. Sue me.

The sun had almost gone below the horizon, but it looked like the light wouldn't go out completely just yet. On a whim, I projected the image of the setting sun on the sky of my heart's secret chamber and smiled at the fascination that the little guy emanated when I raised a digit and pointed the view out to him. I could feel his desire to go out hunting for other marvels.

It finally gave me the idea I needed. "I think I'll name him Orion."

Mikaela lifted her head from my shoulder and gave me a shrewd look. "Orion?"

This time I did project some thoughts into her mind. Some that were mine, some were facts taken straight from the Allspark.

She jerked in surprise, but beyond that there wasn't any worry. "Ah." She smiled pensively. "Orion then."

I smiled widely and looked down at the colorful vortex of light that only the two of us could see. "Hear that, Orion? Your mom agrees!"

There was a flash of curiosity since Orion didn't have a concept of names. He didn't actually "ask' though, but with our minds melded it was a simple matter of projecting my own understanding of them. I did just that, and because you couldn't have a name without the concept of identity I had to share the knowledge of that as well, and half a dozen other related things. The little star flared irregularly a few times as he assimilated the knowledge. Then he flared in delight…

And proceeded to keep sticking to me like glue.

I sighed.

So did Mikaela, since I'd had her mind be part of the exchange, at her unspoken request. I sent her an apologetic glance and she waved me off. Orion was definitely not a mama's boy.

The connection did work all three ways, though. I was alerted to this when a questioning thought came from Orion a few minutes after that first big dose of information we'd given him. It was the first proactive thought on his part, and it made my spirits rise even higher than they already were. Predictably, he was asking about the concept of parents. Sharing a glance with my girlfriend (we may as well keep using that word, for appearances' sake), we instantly knew that we'd end up having to explain a lot of other things, like family and kinship to start with.

About an hour later, we were finally at Mikaela's house. After a long embrace that was as much for me as it was for our unusual little kid, she parted from us without really parting, since I could always keep an empathic mind link going with her as long as she was within my range. That done, I went my own way, finally letting my mind spread across the whole town again, though I was careful not to let Orion be aware of anything outside my Inner World anymore – the secret chamber of my heart – now that Mikaela wasn't nearby.

No need to expose him to the sad parts of life just yet. Hopefully not for a good while. Besides, if he didn't want to come out, I was more than happy to keep him sheltered, especially since he wasn't even an hour old yet.

Fortune smiled upon us and there were no crimes in progress, so it was a quiet enough walk home. Ten minutes later, we were there. A moment was all it took to check whether or not Bumblebee was still in stasis (he was) but I'd come to be aware of a third presence in my parents' house, one I was more than familiar with.

My parents were watching the news in the living room when I entered, and I exchanged the obligatory greetings with them before walking up the stairs. Dad told me who was waiting for me upstairs (I didn't correct them on their assumption that I didn't already know) before returning to the discussion he was having with mom about the benefits of white marble versus black marble.

A few moments later, I was just outside the door to my room. A lesser person would have spent some time coming up with plausible explanations for whatever questions he was likely to be asked by the visitor.

Yeah. No way I was going to do that. I had a different way to go about things.

Insulating my inner world one more time and filling it with enough fatherly love to finally get Orion to relax his death grip (insofar as something without limbs could even grip something) I opened the door and strode into my room like I owned the place (which I did).

Miles Lancaster spun my chair to face me from where he sat at my computer, but I didn't give him a chance to speak.

Instead, I preempted him. "Miles, my good man!" I threw my arms wide in honest greeting. "What do you know about oracles and lucid dreaming?"


	13. Resurgence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Autobots find out about a nasty disaster waiting to happen and get a present to help set them on the path to dealing with it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally got through the worst of the writer's block, not that having to leave my job helped all that much. Or the preparations for a trip abroad. Well, at least I managed to finally get this out. Sorry for the wait.

**Arc III: Initiative of Malcontents  
**

**Chapter 1: Resurgence**

"-. .-"

The asphalt felt just as rough against my tires as ever. It caused an odd ambivalence to fill my thoughts. On the one hand it provided the same adherence as the smooth, gleaming paths of Cybetron's cities, as they were before the war. On the other hand, the human road was also much more fragile in comparison, making it ill advised to accelerate to what we truly considered high speeds, even though the texture would provide more than enough friction for us to remain stable even during the most daring swerves.

If only the asphalt were more durable.

Then again, I was not altogether decided on whether or not I even wished we could pick up speed. Had Sunstreaker or Sideswipe been present, they would surely have advocated in favor of it, several times. Then Ratchet would have been obligated to cuss them out and berate them for always putting exhilaration before common sense. Prompting them in turn to point out that even the greatest speed afforded by this world's roads, the gravity and atmospheric pressure, was in the lower half of what they could attain. But they were not here.

None of my brethren were, save for two mechs. With Bumblebee assigned to Samuel until further notice, and Ratchet staying behind at the decommissioned nuclear silo that had become our base of operations, only Jazz and Ironhide were accompanying me on this mission.

A mission to check on the first readings of the energon sensor grid we had started to set up across the United States. The relay worked by scanning the upper phases of the material universe, where only odd energy streams and phenomena existed on this planet, along most others. The approach would have been useless on Cybetron, where everything existed on every level. Here, however, the concept would serve us well in tracking down other off-worlders, friend and foe alike. Even if the strange things in those higher phases restricted the range of individual relays to a single metropolis instead of the whole continent.

It had been as close to surprise as it could have gotten, to receive a blip on the nascent radar so soon. Literally the moment the first detector came online. There was a single energon detector set up so far, in fact, as a test run In the Las Vegas Valley area before the Autobots were set to begin deploying more of them to other large cities.

The signal came from deep within the Henderson warehouse district.

Traffic masked our approach well enough as we made our way along the outskirts of the Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area, then the districts closer to our goal. It was already late evening, so we did not expect similar traffic once we reached our destination. That could be problematic, since if it really was a decepticon we were closing in on, they would not need to be the brightest sparks in the Well to deduce the change in circumstances just from our approach, masked energy signatures or no. We could only rely on the hope that the bot had been there for a time already, and that its extended residency would offset the ingrained paranoia somewhat.

Assuming it even was a bot that had set off the scanner. The reading had been very faint, so faint that it implied a mech in stasis. Either that, or an active hiding attempt, or perhaps even a trap. An argument I used to forgo any human assistance. Or so-called assistance. In the interest of cooperation, the detector had been linked to the military mainframe at NEST 1, their desert base, so they received the alert the same moment we did. But at this stage, I did not have faith in any human soldier team's ability, barring Lennox's original men who were mostly still recovering from Mission City, to provide armed support instead of getting in the way. I even told as much to General Morshower before leaving, though much more diplomatically.

He actually agreed, as only one month had passed since Mission City and they were still building up their forces, though he said he would have them on standby regardless. At least he had not recalled Will from his much belated family leave.

We were not passing through Las Vegas, but that only made it easier to see the City of Lights from afar, and it was significantly less speckled in lights than usual, compared to images found in our World Wide Web research. Not by as much as the destruction of Hoover Dam would have warranted, but close enough. When a hydroelectric installation produced 4.2 TWh/year in electricity for three states, the world was definitely going to feel it if it was suddenly destroyed without warning.

That had been one of the more sensitive issues brought up by the diplomats during the second session of our alliance negotiations. They did not get the technological release they hoped for, but I did provide them with a working, error-free design for a fusion reactor. Possible to build in a week, the reactor was as small as a shipping container and could produce 15 Megawatts of clean, free energy per day, for only 0.02 cents per kWh. Fusion power was already being researched on Earth, but it would have taken until 2020 to produce the first prototype, and it would have been limited to 5 MW for 0.06 cents per kWh at best.

Bumblebee's holoreport had clearly shown Samuel frowning when confronted with the news that the Autobots had had to make up for his grandfather's "vandalism," as he called it. Sam had been doubly unimpressed when informed that we had not provided US officials with Bumblebee's recording of Henry's fight with my late former brother and, thus, the Autobots had been asked for reparation. Nevertheless, he did close the matter with a joke about me having stolen his chance to submit a patent for the reactor himself.

I was not worried about having deprived him of a source of income, however massive. From what I understood, Bumblebee had already increased Sam's starting funds consisting of the governmental "reward" by a factor of ten. It was spread across several accounts and constantly flowing through investment lines and purchases, but Samuel Witwicky had definitely gone from having 100,000 dollars to his name to being a millionaire.

Not that he seemed to care or do anything with that money save let it pile up "for a rainy day," as he put it. Indeed, when he was not meeting his as yet undeclared intended, he seemed to spend most of his free time methodically memorizing everything that could be paged through in book stores and libraries, or researching something or other on the Internet. He had even made a list of degrees he wanted to earn online, to "stave off boredom" while he waited for the ones that needed a special touch. There were very few and specific options for making any sort of use out of an online law degree, for example.

At least that side of our activities on this new planet seemed to be going well, instead of causing processor aches. And that was not even taking into account the broader problems such as the lack of any sort of energon source. I did not dare presume the war to be over, even with Megatron dead. Starscream had escaped, Soundwave was still out there somewhere, and Shockwave was still unaccounted for, as were many others. But the reprieve we won here may just be enough time for long-term worries to become a foreground process again.

We were finally nearing our destination, and our scanners continued to show no change in the faint signal that was our target. We were keeping radio silence and our energy signatures masked, though the command cloud was safe to use, based on quantum entanglement and with the server in my helm, so Ironhide and Jazz were sniping away as they usually did without worry. I was certain that the people at NEST did not appreciate being essentially blind in this, but it was for the best. As per the terms of our alliance, we had complete freedom in how we operated so long as we continued to stay "in disguise" in front of common folk.

We eventually came to a halt in strategic points around a warehouse. A completely nondescript warehouse surrounded by other nondescript warehouses that were only different in that they looked like they had been experiencing more traffic than the one that concerned us. _:Jazz, what do you have for me?:_

 _:Scout microdrones're buildin' the map right now, hold up."_ It only took a moment. _:There we go. One honkin' map o' drab. Literally. Place seems ta be empty, Boss Bot. No armor or shieldin' of any sort either. If not for the energon blip, I'd say none of our kind've ever been here:_

I surveyed the three-dimensional map, a mixture of external scans and internal visual recordings, and could only reach the same conclusion. Still, the energon signal appeared to come from an object in the middle of the otherwise empty building, so it behooved us to investigate.

Jazz hotwired the door controls to open on both sides and we moved in, weapons out. We did not expect any resistance, and we got none, but it was best to not allow any bad habits to form. Jazz had already deployed an EM cloaking field around the building so no scans would come from outside until we took it down. So there was no clear danger of being sniped either. And with Ironhide standing guard outside, any ballistic missile would be seen coming from miles away.

All those precautions turned out to be unnecessary. The reason we had picked up an energon signal was plain to see: there was one decagram of it in a small glass vial, sitting calmly on top of a small metal cube barely the size of my palm.

A cube made of Protos.

My processor stalled momentarily at the realization. Protos was the name of the primordial material we were made of. A metal that existed on every level of the material universe, just like our sparks and lifeblood. But besides our frames' and sparks own self-regeneration capabilities, there had never been any way to produce more of the metal other than the Allspark. Even seed warheads needed an Energon core to work.

"Is that what ah think it is?"Jazz asked when the silence got too long.

Shuttering my optics to refocus my attention, I descended to one knee and picked up the Energon vial. It was barely large enough for me to grasp it between two digits, but it was real.

"So it was a lure," Jazz deduced, going to one knee on the other side of the cube and performing the deepest scan he could. It was at that point that he should have said whether or not it was a bomb or something otherwise problematic, but instead the mech halted. Even his vents stalled for a moment. The data burst he sent my way the next second made my optics shutter as I was surprised yet again.

After a scan of my own, I had to face the impossibility before me: a messenger cube. They were deliberately innocuous-looking things, programmed so that they could molecularly rearrange into some kind of data storage device or other. Except they only worked when subjected to a very specific electromagnetic pattern from the bot whose spark signature it was keyed to. Forceful attempts at activation resulted in them becoming useless dust. As far as message delivery systems went, it was the only one I knew of that could never be hacked or otherwise subverted.

Cubes like that had not been used in hundreds of vorns. Mostly because they needed the sender to be closely familiar with the spark of the one they intended the message for, when the recipient was too far away from a simple telepathic message to be an option, making them more or less restricted to members of the same family or clan. Of which barely any were left, and only three pairs in what remained of the Autobot army. Two, since my own link to Bumblebee barely counted.

No doubt having reached the same conclusion as myself, Jazz looked down and waved his servo over the cube. No response.

Climbing back to his feet, the silver-colored bot gave me a measuring stare and waited.

All logic said there was no way anyone could have left a data packet for me in this particular form. But there was nothing to be lost by trying, so I repeated Jazz' maneuver and sent a pulse outward from my spark, through my circuits until it escaped through my servo in an invisible wave, intangible to beings and objects living in the primary material phase.

I almost gave a start when the cube burst apart and the countless trillions of protos molecules and immediately reformed into a holopad. Who on Earth could have…?

I shook my helm and put the question aside for now.

Holopads were small handheld things, by our standards at least. They were actually shaped like a deceptively simple-looking rods. Only when picked up and activated – by pressing the buttons on the two ends – did they allow two frame edges to snap out from the upper side, forming an incomplete rectangle that could then project a holodisplay. Knowing all this, I picked up the object and turned it on.

I had been half-expecting some cryptic clue, perhaps some incomplete report from long ago, or even an inconsequential letter that had somehow been lost in space and ended up here over the eons. But the energon vial had quite blatantly been put here as a lure, and recently, so those possibilities were dim at best.

Nevertheless, nothing could have prepared me for what the written cyberglyphics actually informed me of once the holoscreen activated in front of my optics. There were words there. Words, sentences and code. Meaning buried under cyphers that had not been used since the exodus, but which I and my longest-standing officers always kept in mind for when some truly critical message had to be delivered but could not be done in person. Saying that it set a fire under my desire to know the identity of the sender would have been the understatement of the millennia.

But as the text kept scrolling forth like a tunnel of light – so much more complex than the woefully simplistic up-down approach of human writing – even the flame of that desire died down to a small ember in the face of the apprehension that grabbed a hold of me.

This… this was a problem.

"-. .-"

Most humans were barred from venturing into our base, such as it was, and of those who did have clearance, only a few ever tended to stop by. In the first two weeks things were different, as technicians had to get the former nuclear silo operational, retrofitted with electrical wiring and the like, so that Ratchet and I might have a foundation for installing some of our equipment. The medbay was set up first, then the main living area came to be. After the first month, however, the Xanthium finally reached high orbit around the planet and then landed in a nearby canyon. That allowed us to transfer enough hardware to set up a surveillance and communications station with enough processing power to run Teletraan-1 on site.

Teletraan-1 was an artificial intelligence advanced enough to keep all of earth's programming experts awake for decades on end trying to understand it, even not factoring in the three-dimensional, glyph-based programming language it was based on. Ironically enough, as a computer Teletraan-1 was actually several steps below what we considered state of the art, but it was ages ahead of anything humans had available. The processing power had not been taxed much even while the AI performed an unassisted atmospheric reentry and landing. Thus, it would only be limited by the quality of the sensors in its task of keeping an eye on the base and recording energon readings around the world.

The quality of the readings was not high, I had to admit, since the alloys used by mankind were unsuitable for the more advanced technology we could manufacture, thus the security of the silo was not optimal. However, there was a single entrance large enough for bots of problematic size to come through, even in their alternate modes. With Frenzy gone, there were few small infiltrators available to the Decepticons. Unless a pretender found its way here, but those bots were usually apt at getting around even our better security measures, so they did not truly count.

Still, the scanners set up were more than sufficient for the task of tracking every spark and organic life sign within fifty miles, all without reliance on any satellite aid. A range which included the city of Jasper, and easily covered the recently reopened desert base as well, where NEST was stationed. It was just a ten minute drive away after all.

That was why Teletraan-1 was able to notify me when William Lennox and Robert Epps climbed into a van and left the base grounds. The notice actually came the moment they drove out the gate.

I stood on the edge of the rocky outcropping underneath which our base resided. The plan had been to watch the sunset, always a wonderful view in the desert. The city of Jasper somewhat marred the view, itself being located westward of the silo. But if I refrained from zooming in too far, it almost became part of the landscape rather than a stain on the horizon. Besides, I had seen worse. Not much could be considered a worse sight than Kaon.

I turned away and strode towards the beaten path. I would not be watching the rest of the sunset tonight.

Once I was near enough to what passed for a dirt road, I transformed and drove back into the base. Once there, it was easy enough to reach my makeshift quarters and dig through the items I had bought in the city some time ago. It was refreshing to finally be on a planet where we could actually find a use for our hardlight holoforms.

Normally I would have simply stored the items in a subspace pocket, tiny as they were. But wine got better with age, and the stasis it would be put under would ruin that.

After that, it only took a small application of electromagnetic manipulation to reform some of my servo metal into two transparent glasses and a tray. Energon starvation may have rendered most of our fancier transformation capabilities impossible at worst or impractical at best, but for bots versed in Diffusion like myself, small tricks were still more than doable when the company was worth the effort.

Company that had finally driven into the hangar.

This would require timing, so I resolved to wait until Will and Robert were just a few steps away from the door leading to the rec room. Once the conditions were all in place, it took merely the tiniest allocation of background processing power to electromagnetically float the tray in my servo all the way over to the table in the main recreation room, just as the doors slid open.

William Lennox already had his mouth open to greet or otherwise call for me, but the sight of a floating object with a bottle of wine and two glasses on it curtailed whatever he was about to say. Up high, lounging on a reinforced catwalk and hidden in semi-darkness, Jazz was fit to burst with laughter – at me or the humans, I was unsure – but he contained himself.

Barely.

And only due to his wish to have the chance to startle them a bit himself, later.

My voice was empty of the amusement I had derived from their temporary speechlessness. "Hello William, Robert."

That finally snapped them from the trance caused by the flying object. Which had, incidentally, finally landed on the man-sized table with nary a sound. "Oh! Right. Hi!" Will cleared his throat with an artificial cough while Epps tossed me a wry look.

Not that he was going to stay quiet. "Long time no see, Big Buddha!"

It was times like this that reinforced my conclusion that Samuel had some way to, at least subconsciously, glimpse the future. It had been he, after all, who called me that name first. Or, rather, said he would not call me by that name, because he felt it would be stealing the privilege of doing so from someone else.

Now I knew who he meant. "It is good to see you hale." I ran my scanners over them, unseen and unheard. "Both of you." This was the first time we finally met in person after they were taken away by medics and put on enforced leave after Mission City.

"That what the wine is for?" Epps asked as he strode over to the table and picked up the bottle. "Were you getting ready for a toast to our health? Because if that's it, then let me just say awww, shucks." Once he had the bottle in hand, he gave it an appreciative once-over. "Not the best I've seen, but definitely not the worst either." The dark-sinned man looked up at me again. "Trying to butter us up?"

I chuckled at his question but answered truthfully. "No, only William."

The man in question literally fell into one of the chairs around the table. "Great!" He then slumped backwards and groaned dramatically. "Way to spoil any hopes I had of the briefing I just went through being just a prank from hell!"

My budding amusement faltered, but I did not show it outwardly. "I fear not."

Lennox had been on leave until the previous day, when he was finally forcefully recalled in order to be brought up to speed on the intelligence that we recovered from the data package found in the warehouse. A warehouse which, upon later research, was revealed to have recently been bought and registered under the name "Orion Pax" of all things. The paper and electronic trail led nowhere, even after Jazz tried to follow it, but the name of the "owner" was more telling than anything else could have been.

Orion Pax was _my_ name. Or at least had been, during my younger years. I was unsure what message the warehouse "owner" was trying to convey by using it. Somehow, I doubted it was a case of the property being registered under my name as a gift. Especially if the one contacting us was part of the organization they had just blown the whistle on.

On the other hand, NEST had practically seized the place, so that may as well have been the case, for all the difference it made. Not that we ever mentioned it to them, or anything about that name of mine, or others I may or may not have been known under. We were far from the stage where we could share such private matters, especially when they were ultimately irrelevant to the matter at hand. As far as the humans were concerned, Orion Pax was the name of a Cybertronian from long before the war, one that the informant had used as a way to imply they had at least some accurate knowledge of us.

I propped my shoulder against the wall and watched as William poured himself a glass of wine, then waited for Epps to do the same. While he did that, I pulled an Energon cube out of subspace. It was empty, but a minor application of holographic technology would make it seem as though I was sharing a drink with them.

No need to let anyone know just how dire our straits were. No offense to them, but I did not trust any human to the same extent I did Samuel, and he had figured it out all on his own.

"Well then!" Lennox spoke at last, holding up his glass. "A toast to the _interesting_ times we live in I guess." After which he drunk the whole glass in one go, like a shot. "God, I wish Ironhide was here to crack a joke or something, 'cause I can't think of any."

My weapons specialist was currently playing the role of ludicrously armored and reinforced family van, while Sarah Lennox was off buying some things. Her daughter was along for the ride by necessity, since William had had to be recalled so very suddenly.

"Shit," Lennox cursed as he rubbed his eyes for a moment. He did not even bat an eyelash as I pulled a six-pack of beers from subspace and used a protos webbing to float it over to their table. "It wasn't bad enough that Sector Seven went so far overboard despite having some semblance of oversight. Now we find out there's _another_ version of it out there?" As soon as it was within reach, he snatched one of the beer cans and popped the seal. He took a long, long chug of the drink, then almost carelessly set the can back on the table with a clank. "Sector Seven's evil twin! Because the Hoover Dam jerks weren't already bad enough! Christ, this is like one of those terrible bad Sci Fi flicks from the seventies!"

 _:Guess we're outdated, eh boss?:_ Jazz snarked over the comm.

 _:Not_ _ **all**_ _of those movies are bad…:_ Ironhide chimed in with a grumble. He was listening in from across the state, naturally.

_:Yer tastes aren' exactly much ta speak of though, 'Hide.:_

I tuned out the familiar scene of my second and third in command descending into a verbal slug fest. In about four minutes it would be most lucrative for me to make the obligatory comparison between their argument and a lovers' spat, prompting Jazz to sulk about never having found 'the one' and causing Ironhide to fall into a brooding episode while he thought of no one and nothing besides Chromia and her continued absence. Either way, their exchange of barbs would stop.

But that would be in four minutes. The present had other things to occupy my foreground processes. Like William Lennox and Robert Epps mixing alcoholic drinks. Fortunately, it was their off-shift, though Lennox's position as second in command of the human forces at NEST made the situation of drinking on or off the job somewhat nebulous.

Speaking of whom. "Do we still have no idea who leaked all that info?" Lennox asked.

"Sadly no," I answered.

"I don't know Optimus." Lennox rose from his chair and started pacing, occasionally drinking from his beer. The second one of the evening. "All of this, it's beyond fishy."

I could understand his stance. It would have been worrisome enough if the message had been just a brief mention of our newest antagonists. But the holopad had much more information than that. The name of the organization, its manifesto, the main supporters, the primary members. Even full biographies and psychological profiles for each. So much information that it seemed too convenient to be true. Even I had that opinion.

But the message had been coded using cyphers only I and my immediate subordinates ever used. By all accounts no one should have known them, let alone be familiar enough with them and Cybertronian technology to contact us in such a manner. On Earth or elsewhere in the universe. Or the language itself, for that matter. It made me both dread and hope that the people we had just been warned about had certain high-profile Autobots in their custody. Bots long since written off as terminated, but who were reaching out to us for help now that we were finally here.

My spark flashed with the impulse to seethe at how the leak offered no information on such prisoners, beyond mentioning that they existed. I forced it down, choosing instead to review the data on the humans we were sure to come into conflict with sooner rather than later. And on whom there was so _much_ information that a case could be made for our whistleblower having spied on each of them in turn.

Extensively.

Carter Newell, Hank Kirkpatrick, Hanz Woolf, Ingrid Sentenza. All of them leading various projects. All of them together forming "The Initiative," a shadowy organization whose only purpose was to use Cybertronian technology for personal gain and, eventually, to create a new Allspark.

Sheer folly. There was no other way to describe that goal of theirs. They even called it Project Nefarious, as if what was left of their conscience was trying to tell them something through whatever subconscious channels it could access.

Apparently, they had a military division with access to effective anti-Cybertronian weaponry, derived from Cybertronians they captured over the past few decades. They also had a mobile base that could transform, and enough pilfered hardware that the woman, Ingrid, could use it to remotely hack and control transformers. Those with weak enough defense systems at least.

As if that was not revolting enough, they had perfected a process by which they could keep transformers semi-operational, allowing them to brainwash them through brute force hacks while preventing them from entering stasis and purging the malicious control code from their systems. I dreaded the damage this treatment must have caused their frames and very sparks after so long, since this was only possible if the outgoing spark-frame connections were deliberately and constantly sabotaged as they kept reforming.

Decepticons like Megatron, Shockwave and Flatline liked to use that approach during torture more often than I cared to contemplate.

Once translated into English – it was provided in Mechan, which more or less ruled out this being a human source – all the intelligence took up over two hundred pages. This was the sort of leak that could make or break a war, and yet it lacked two key elements: the whereabouts of the Initiative, and the identities of the corporate magnates backing and profiting off Carter Newell's organization.

Carter Newell himself was a real piece of work. The leader of the initiative and the one who gathered like-minded egoists together in his power trip. His youth read like a tragic tale, with him losing his parents to a car crash caused by a chase between two flyers – yet another lead we would have to investigate. But at this stage the man had well and truly fallen off the slippery slope of revenge and into the maw of megalomania. Whoever our new informant was, they had not painted a pretty picture of him, or his plans. I still intended to reserve judgment, but knowing what he had supposedly done to Fortress, and so many others…

Lennox and Epps were talking to Jazz now. My 2IC had exposed himself some minutes ago, when I finally compared him and Ironhide to lovesick fools. I allowed them their quip match while I got my spark to settle down from the bubbling irritation that had overtaken it. Irritation at being helpless in the face of insufficient information. For all that the leak had been detailed to a ridiculous degree, it lacked the core elements we would need to track the organization down and deal with it. Worse, there was no explanation given as to why that hole in the data was there. It was obvious that the mysterious informant was in possession of the entire picture, but had kept part of it back for some reason.

As I pretended to sip from my energon cube and participated in the ongoing discussion, I opened an old hololog in my mind's eye, one recorded by Bumblebee just before Hoover Dam's collapse. The last talk between Sam and his grandsire. It was plain to see, now, that Henry Matthews had been aware of the Initiative back then, and was already working against them. Lining the dam with explosives over his entire tenure as an S7 agent had been done with their maniacal aims in mind, not us.

Or perhaps with both, given the propensity of people in that bloodline for foresight.

And now the human leaders of NEST knew what we knew. Meaning that it was only a matter of time before Soundwave found out, single-minded as he was in his duty to Megatron, dead or not.

My mood having been well and truly soured, I sat down on what was once an observation terrace and opened a private link with Bumblebee. Perhaps he had some new amusing anecdote to share, about his charges and their way of life. Sam's mother seemed particularly predisposed towards amusing misinterpretations, and there were any number of other strange things that could take my mind off things.

My stress level was not yet high enough for me to indulge in the folly of wishing Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were here to play a few pranks, but at this rate it was only a matter of time.

"-. .-"

Two weeks passed without any new headway made in regards to the Initiative situation.

Fortunately, the issue only ever made it to the eyes and ears of the core NEST brass, and the distinct absence of infiltration attempts or info raids on the part of the Decepticons suggested there had been no leaks. That was the good news. The bad news, or part of it, was that some of the humans, a rather odious man by the name of Theodore Galloway in particular, started to call it all a red herring. A prank. Any more shouting on his part and the restricted information would be known to every janitor and their grandmother, never mind the soldiers stationed at the base that were still only serving on trial basis.

I had yet to figure out how in the Allspark's name the US President and the Joint Chiefs had come to consider him a good fit for the post of liaison to the American government.

Admittedly, there was nothing to be found through any sort of investigation. Largely due to the Initiative predating the existence of the Internet and most forms of country-wide, centralized communication systems. No doubt the members and backers kept their data in paper format and electronic mainframes physically cut off from any and all publically-accessible networks and hubs. There was no other explanation for Jazz' meticulous cyberwarfare talents and feelers yielding no results. Even investigators that attempted to uncover the paper trail could find no such trail to track after days of searching. Whoever destroyed all folders and traces of them was very thorough, and time could easily have disposed of the remnants.

No one was happy with how completely the mysterious informant had control of the information available to us in this regard. It was, thus, no small surprise when, one Saturday evening, Jazz suddenly got a ping that a new property had just been registered under the name of Orion Pax. And as if to taunt us, said property happened to be located in the city of Jasper, Nevada.

Right next door, as Lennox so very aptly put it once we notified him and General Morshower of the new development.

It took mere minutes for us to mobilize. Normally I would have had Bumblebee scout things out, but with him on guardian duty his scout role had to be relegated to another. Fortunately, Jazz was well suited for the task. He left immediately to do a recon, while Ironhide and I waited for William, Robert and two of their fellow Mission City veteran rangers to join us. This once, NEST would be represented, even if we did not anticipate any exchange of fire.

With Ironhide just behind me, I was in front of the warehouse less than half an hour later, to receive a rather strange data burst from my 2IC. Specifically that this warehouse seemed quite full of square containers, or what I assumed to be containers, but that none of our scanners could reach through them to see what was inside. A second data burst from Jazz revealed information compiled from recordings taken by nearby security and traffic cameras, as well as the electronic trail that concluded with the warehouse's most recent change in ownership.

Apparently, contracted delivery crews had shipped over and unloaded several trucks full of unnervingly familiar-looking cubic crates over the course of the past five days. Said shipment of crates originated from – my processor heat up for the briefest of instants – the side of the freeway a hundred miles north.

Literally in the middle of nowhere.

It appeared that the delivery people were working under the conviction that the entire operation was legitimate, since their records were all in order. Deep analysis by Jazz revealed enough clues that their database had been hacked and that their physical records had been altered to match, suggesting that a human infiltrator – or a pretender bot, though I was leery of the possibility to say the least – had snuck into their headquarters in downtown Jasper and left without anyone the wiser at some point during the week prior.

I left the task of coming up with theories on who, what, how and why to my background processes. Right now, I needed to see for myself if what my sensors were telling me was really true. Setting aside various electromagnetic and subspace countermeasures, there was only one material in the cosmos that could fully block our scans when layered thickly enough, and none of it should have existed off Cybertron save what we brought with us, as part of our ship or of our frames.

Checking to make sure that the four humans were in position behind us, I nodded to Jazz.

The Autobot quickly subverted the electronic control system of the entrance, causing the door to start sluggishly lifting upwards. I waited next to the left edge of it, feeling my patience strain more than it had in vorns, until it was finally up all the way. Jazz went in first, and I followed seconds later when he sent the all clear.

The sight before me was impossible, and brought me to a halt two meters away from the nearest case. Case that was not truly a case, on account of having no detachable parts to speak of. Roughly six feet in height, it looked more like a perfectly smooth, dark grey cube, poured and molded into shape rather than put together. Like the small data cube of before, chests like this could only be activated by a precise spark pulse from the intended recipient. They would not self-destruct on unauthorized access attempts, but there was no safe way to open them without the proper and inimitable spark ID.

For the dozenth time I wondered who in the Universe could have…

I had no family left alive. My spark bore the scars of that. This was _impossible_.

On the metal chest opposite the entrance lay a data cube like the one before, save for one difference: the Prime glyph was etched onto it this time.

I looked around, saying nothing. An emotion so old flared in my spark for a moment… but I quashed it down as reason asserted itself, pointed out how easily any one of the crates in front of me could hold bombs or Primus knew what else. Or perhaps it was my millennia-honed pessimism giving those thoughts form, while my reason told me that this could only be good. That even if the crates proved to be empty or filled with rocks, to mock us, the Protos they were made was a boon all on its own. A wonderful, precious thing, next time one of us got damaged or when some device or other had to be constructed.

My optics swept across the dozen of crates spread and stacked throughout the warehouse in a semicircle. Even if they turned out to be hollow, the quantity of Protos was more than what we would be able to scavenge from the Xanthium without rendering it useless. Over the vorns since leaving our planet on our great search we had had to do a lot of that, and had been forced to replace most of the ship's superstructure with parts made of substandard ores, and only the main hull, the endoskeleton, was left as before.

Could it really be that simple? That the informant held back on the key details on the Initiative due to believing us too ill equipped to deal with it?

On a hunch, I activated my optics' full range of view, allowing me to see all phases of the material universe simultaneously, and I beheld things clearly for the first time since making planetfall. Somehow, the energies – or beings – on the higher and lower phases of the material dimension had been cleared from this property's confines. Normally there was enough sensory feedback to literally blind us, and the physical laws were such that any attack we made was countered on every level, preventing the cascading flux that would otherwise magnify the impact and explosive potential of our every attack by a factor of eleven. And attacks against us were inexplicably supplemented in a similar manner, which was the only reason terran weapons affected us, even weakened as we were after having essentially been starved for eons.

Often I wondered what the humans would say if we told them just how much the planet itself affected their chances at inflicting harm upon us. Perhaps there was a higher authority at work here. Or perhaps this was the basis for the many legends that existed about intelligent spirits and elemental forces. Folklore could have simply stemmed from accounts by people with the ability to see the higher and lower wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.

With a minute shake of my helm, I switched my vision back to the main material phase and refocused. This was not the time to get sidetracked.

With slow steps, I neared the closest case and ran a hand over it and the side, sending spark waves out through my palm. Nothing changed.

They needed a specific pulse modulation then, rather than just the spark signature.

I looked at the message cube for a long moment.

Then I looked back at the others. Jazz and Ironhide had taken position on my flanks, looking around with undisguised amazement, both of them. The humans had taken position on each side of the door, two each. I spoke to them. "Stay alert but do not shoot unless we give the order. Even if we start to do it ourselves, understand?" I waited for them to nod and offered some explanation. "There are certain security measures sometimes embedded in these data packages, scans that may feel strange, lights that may look out of place. Do _not_ react aggressively or the device may lock up and purge itself of anything useful."

In all honesty I would have rather they waited outside, but we and NEST had built a level of trust and co-reliance which, while not all that high as of yet, was still above whatever rapport had been established between us and whoever was… doing all this. Whatever it was.

Saying nothing more, I held out my hand and sent the activation wave. The cube was not within reach unless I knelt, but my control over my inner energies was good enough that such proximity was not strictly required.

This time it was not a mere holopad that I was presented with. Before anything even happened, the door to the warehouse slammed down instantly. The shock of the noise was more than enough to make the four humans whirl around and point their weapons on sheer instinct. We Autobots had the benefit of 360-degree sensor coverage, so we managed to refrain from a similar reaction.

That gave use a clear view of what happened next. The cube burst in a cloud of dust that went completely inert in a flash. A wave of light, blue and white, wasted no time in rushing out in every direction from the depths of that amorphous cloud, washing through and over us but causing little else besides a full-frame tingle. I knew, however, that doing us harm was not the intended goal of that EMP burst. The point was to eliminate the recording and wireless communication capabilities of the soldiers' equipment.

"What the fuck was that?" Epps hissed, spinning around to face the same direction as us once more. Lennox did the same, though Eric Mason and Emil Redford kept their guns aimed at the entrance. "Shit, tech's been shot."

I did not verbally acknowledge them, since I was instead riveted on the sight of the cloud of Protos particles hovering in place, motionless at knee level. And when the cloud started to revolve around an invisible point in the middle and _ascend_ , I expanded my vision to include the phase just above the primary one. Then the next when that yielded nothing, then another and another, and another still. Only when I tuned into the highest possible perception layer did I finally see what I sought, and it was more than I expected. The Protos dust had already ascended to my chest level, and it was a perfect sphere now, slowly spinning around a brilliant blue star, with golden solar winds and a white corona that languidly floated through the air, a shroud of white light, like cloud strands that reached out to the world around them.

It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, but for the first time in a long time I experienced the type of surprise that caused not even the slightest unease.

It was beautiful.

Then the Protos dust was suddenly pulled inward and reformed with a flash that forced me to switch down my vision yet again, lest I be momentarily blinded. Once my optics recalibrated, the small star had become visible to everyone else, even human sight, on account of the floating holographic drone at its core, hidden from normal sight by the small sun itself. Yet some metallic particles were left, revolving around the star like planetary rings, three of them in all, spinning along orthogonal pivot axes. It made the whole apparition look like a gimbal, but the truth of the situation was so much more.

Alas, I did not actually know what I was looking at, a state of mind shared by all of us present. William Lennox ended up being the first one to voice the thought we all had in our minds. "What the hell is that?" he breathed.

Not quite as delicately as I might have put it, but effective in that it prompted an immediate reaction.

The hovering star went from being in front of me to hovering in front of Lennox in the blink of an eye. "Ack!" the man gasped as he barely avoided falling on his backside when he scrambled backwards. "What the _hell_!?"

All three of us Autobots reoriented ourselves as quickly as we could, but even so I did not catch the tail end of the sudden spatial transition. The star had moved faster than we could turn.

And then it spoke. "To answer your question, I will be your liaison this evening." The words carried the odd echo of a vocalizer belonging to a bot not quite used to the emotional nuances of a recently learned language. "But first!" One of the dust rings reformed into a sort of physically disconnected rod that nonetheless ran a very visible wide-beam teal-colored scan over the man. Will brandished his weapon and backed further away with a curse, but the star spoke again before he could "William 'Wild Bill' Lennox. Army Ranger rank: Major. Official NEST position: second in command of human forces. Practical NEST position: de facto Commander-in-Chief." Will blinked at the blunt assessment. "Security risk level…" A moment passed in silence. "Negligible on account of honorable morality rating."

Before the spooked man could react to that, the gimbal-suspended holo-star, in all its basketball-sized glory, shot over to float in front of Emil Redford and make a scan. "Emil Redford." Then shot across the warehouse to the other soldier. "And Eric Mason. US Army rank: Second Lieutenant. Security risk level: negligible due to basic morals and lacking divided loyalties on account of possessing no social life."

"Hey!" Both of them balked in outrage, momentarily forgetting the surrealism of the situation as I merely watched on.

That left Robert Epps, and he endured the scan with minimal fuss. He did not even blink. A shame it did not last. "Robert 'Bobby' Epps. United States Airforce position: Chief Master Sergeant. Official position at NEST: trainer and coordinator. Practical position at NEST: second in command. Security risk level: moderate. Security risk level not counting loyalty to commanding officer Lennox: above average."

"Hey!" Epps looked well and truly insulted.

The star flared for a moment. "On account of possible conflict of loyalties in the eventuality of one of more of the wife and five children being held hostage by enemy forces."

Epps stared at the thing in front of him, but decided not to comment further despite mouthing silently for some seconds.

"Hypothetically speaking only, of course," the floating star amended all too late.

My spark went out to Robert, but he did not seem to disagree with the assessment, no matter how uncomfortable. If only there were more of us on Earth, we would be able to assign a guardian to his family like Ironhide decided to become for Lennox' spouse and daughter.

"How the hell did it get all that from a scan?" Hamilton asked under his breath.

"I did not," the star said from where it had suddenly appeared a foot from his face between one optic shutter and the next. The man yelped and staggered back but managed to stay on his feet and toss a glare, now that the threat of it being hostile seemed to be passing. "That was to check for subdermal tracking devices, implants or chemical imbalances that could render human presence more harmful than helpful during this first contact situation."

That was basically an admission that the thing or whoever had sent it was in the habit of running background checks more thorough than the law permitted. No one actually commented on it however, probably on account of hearing the words "first contact."

Sharing a short glance with my Autobots, I signaled them to let things play out for a while longer.

Lennox noticed but played along. "So what are you then?"

"I am an Abstract Neoaccord-Generated Empyreal Lifeform."

Silence.

Until Second Lieutenant Eric Mason broke it due to being incapable of containing his skepticism. "Did that thing just call itself an angel?"

"What?" Epps hissed from nearby.

"Abstract Neoaccord-Generated Empyreal Lifeform…?" He entreated, and after a few moments the acronym dawned on the other man.

"I am _not_ referring to _anything_ as Angel, Mister Angel or anything else like that," Emil Redford flatly stated from behind William. I half-expected him to add something along the lines of 'especially a glorified AI' but it seemed that Wiliam's insistence that we were not just machines extended to this situation, making them err on the side of caution until they knew what they were dealing with.

"We are getting sidetracked," the star mused in its still not quite accurate way of mimicking human inflexion. "I suppose it should not surprise me, seeing as my father warned me of this."

"Your _father_?" Epps asked in clear disbelief.

"Yes, my _father_." It figured that the first emotion properly conveyed would be sarcasm. "At the risk of giving away my favorite pop culture pastimes that will not be published until two years from now, did you assume I spawned from a log?"

Jazz finally could not contain himself any longer. "Like a data log?"

My 2IC did not visibly react when the entity suddenly shot to its optic-level, save for keeping it in his sights. "Jazz, **Shadow-of-Waking-Night**." I stiffened at hearing the star speak in English and subsonic Mechan at the very same time. "Official Position in Autobot Command: Third Ranking Officer of All Forces. Current Acting Position: Second in Command of Terran Operations, on account of the absence of the officer of superior rank. Security risk level… Impossible to determine on account of subject possessing too broad a perspective, extensive skill and experience in matters of counterintelligence and information dissemination."

"Why thank ya, lil'buddy!" Jazz enthused. "Ah'm pleased ta know ah'm famous!"

"In possession of a healthy sense of humor as well," the star drily noted. "Or skill in depicting a flawless impression of it with the purpose of steering any and all listeners away from avenues of reflection potentially hazardous to your health."

"Oh really?" Jazz asked. "Like what?"

"Like how having a reputation for being the perfect spy more or less invalidates the validity of said reputation, since infiltrators should not be known for their talents at all."

Jazz' optics were invisible due to his black, opaque visor, but his mouth plates stretched in a grin. "Oh, I _like_ this one." The star became marginally brighter as if pleased by the comment. Somehow, I could feel it like I did my own kind, which strongly implied there was an actual spark in front of me, as impossible as the idea was. A spark without a frame, without even a forcefield to maintain its cohesion. For his part, Jazz crossed his arms. "Ya' still ain't denied bein' spawned from a data log though."

The star floated a few feet away and pulsed in annoyance or amusement, I could not tell. "Should I speak to you of Eternity, and how I came to be, the result of a communion between my father and mother deep within the infinity of space?" The biosigns of the humans flickered through surprise, indecision and deliberate skepticism. "The story of how I came to be would stretch even your suspension of disbelief I'm afraid, despite your very real awareness of things on this world that mankind is ignorant of."

Then, as a total 180 from the casual mood it projected, the star got into Ironhide's face without any forewarning. "And my name is Orion, thanks for asking!" After which it floated over to the corner of the warehouse and proceeded to sulk.

"What do you mean your name is Orion?" Ironhide blurted with no small amount of ire, and the mood radiating from the suddenly reclusive floating fireball only became more morose.

The unexpected turn of mood would not have rendered me unsure of what to do, if not for the strange signals I was reading.

Fortunately, Jazz always did have a way with words. "Ironhide! Now look what ya did!"

"Me?!" And so it was that Ironhide's vocalizer exploded in a gasp of outrage. "How is _that_ in any way my fault? I didn't do nothin'!"

"Well, 'Hide, it _was_ you that the li-" Jazz got cut off.

"I'm gonna shoot you." Ironhide flatly said all of a sudden.

"Now let's all just-" Lennox got cut off too.

"Not helping, Will."

"Now look, I was just gonna say-"

"Not. Helping!" The large, thick-set mech growled at his shin-sized partner. Then he turned towards the little one. "And don't think I didn't notice you not answering me! What's with the name? Think this is a joke, do you?"

"Now hold on! Why is the name important again?" Lennox pressed.

"'Hide's just tryin' to distract yah from the issue of 'im being so horrible to the guy-"

"Jazz…"

"-odd too, since he's usually the best one with kids-"

"Jazz, I'm warning you!"

"-and ah' guess he must have some weird fetish for the name-"

"Jazz, SHUT UP!"

For my part, I beheld the little star, this Orion, trying to figure out just what I was sensing from him. It did not prevent me from overseeing the ongoing argument, however, or the side-comments that the humans exchanged. One particular voice caught my audial, as Hamilton whispered to Epps a question when he thought none of us would hear. "Is this like Ironhide's Penguins thing?"

I internally winced when the black mech turned a truly baleful glare on the man. "What did you just say!?" In a second he had already made two threatening steps towards him. "You think that's funny? Do ya, punk?!" His Pride and Joy both came out of subspace with a nearly inaudible whine.

"Whoa, shit man, what the fuck!?" The soldier literally hid behind his superior officer.

"Want me to have you marooned on the coast of Greenland to see how funny they are? Huh!? You and your buddies spreading the word about the damn crippled half-bird behind my back, is that it?"

"You mean that whole rumor's real?" He squeaked.

"Rumor!? RUMOR!?" Ironhide snarled. "Who's been spreading rumors about me? How did anyone even find out about-" All of a sudden, all was quiet. Completely still. Then Ironhide slowly, ominously, turned around to stare at Jazz. "… You." The word sounded like it had been forced out through a bandsaw. "It was YOU!"

"Ah'm not admittin' ta anythin' an' ya can't make meEEP!" The saboteour barely hopped away from a lumbering collision. "Ya' won' take me alive!" He landed on top of a crate two rows away and proceeded to scramble to the relative safety of having me between him and my weapon specialist. "Ah'm too cute'n'cuddly ta die!"

"THAT"S IT! I'M GONNA RIP YOUR BACKSTRUTS OUT THROUGH -"

With the decisiveness of someone suddenly experiencing total clarity, I released an energon pulse from my spark in all directions. The barely visible wave washed over the whole area and brought both of my mechs to a sudden halt.

After a time with no explosions going off, the humans started to unwind, very slowly.

Situation well in hand, I turned to Lennox to explain. "There are certain physical phenomena and energies in the higher phases of the material universe that occur on the surface and within the gravity wells of planets, phenomena that are usually stifling to us. Somehow, they have been cleared from this place." I made a broad, encompassing gesture. "I had forgotten due to my focus on Orion, but when unprepared for the sudden freedom from such conditions, it gives our kind a sort of rush."

Lennox looked from me to a motionless and thoroughly abashed Ironhide, to a twitching Jazz and, finally, back to me. "Are you saying… that right now those two are high on _fresh air?_ "

I shrugged off his understandable incredulity. It was a close enough analogy. "What I just did was saturate the highest phase of the world with my energon field, to counter the effects enough for them to regain themselves." A rather wasteful action, but the best in that situation. I would have to spend twice the normal time in stasis in order to restore my Energon levels back to low instead of the very low I could see myself in by the time we got back to base. I did not tell them that.

"Right," the black mech rumbled from across the area, subspacing his cannons at last. "Let's not speak of this. Ever."

"Right," Jazz wheezed. "Ah'm fine now, ah' think." He hopped down from the crate and took the position that was once Ironhide's. "Have ta say, though, 'Hide, you're looking cute'n'cuddly now yo'self-"

"Enough!" I cut in, silencing both of them. "Thank you." My tone may have been harsher than normal, but in this case it was warranted. Glaring at them in turn, I saw precisely when the realization came to them of how much the energon wave had truly taken out of me. They both became contrite and fell back in line.

"Right then," I sighed and turned to face inward of the building. "Young one. Orion, was it?"

"Yes, Optimus Prime sir." The holo-star came to float in front of me somewhat less hurriedly than before. "Um… Does this mean I can address you now, sir?" I was honestly surprised by the hesitance. It seemed genuine. "Is it okay if I call you sir, sir?"

I looked down at the being, or hologram of a being, floating just below my helm level. "What else would you call me?"

"… Your Majesty?" Lennox gave a start and the other three men blinked in confusion, but Orion ignored them. "Your Eminence? Your Worship? Your-"

I raised a servo, trying to keep up with the increasingly strange situation. "Optimus is fine."

"Not to me."

That gave me pause. Did Orion even realize how endearing his manner was? "Go with whatever makes you most comfortable then."

"Thank you, sir!" He sounded truly relieved. And yet it seemed like it took visible strain for him to keep speaking to me directly. Fortunately, fate gave him a reprieve, however short.

"He's a king?" Emil hissed to Epps.

Some realization seemed to come upon William. I may not have been facing him, but our kind could easily 'see' in all directions. "Is that why you didn't address him before?"

Orion seemed vaguely embarrassed. Somehow I knew it. "Well, you can't just float over and get into a king's face." His words broke off as if something had stopped him from saying it. The star flickered a few times and wandered vaguely rightward. "Sorry sir. Being near you is… overwhelming."

"Okay, that is too adorable for words," Epps said. "Weird as hell, but adorable."

"I apologize," I told the floating being. "Could you tell me exactly what about me makes you uncomfortable?"

"It's not you, sir!" he hastened to reassure me, even as he wobbled further away. "Father told me I wasn't ready for prolonged contact with your kind, at least not away from him…" The star pulsed several times as it stabilized. "Father's doing what he can to help me adjust, but... This was supposed to just be a remote communication device, but I insisted on being-" Orion shook himself and the rings spinning around him almost lost alignment. "It's nothing you're doing, sir. Your character rating is unimpeachable! It's your spark, It's…" He wavered, as if straining to stay coherent. "It's _ancient._ It shines in the astral plane with the brightness of a dozen suns…" He floated another meter away.

I blinked, not truly understanding what I was being told. Behind me, the humans gaped in astonishment of their own, completely thrown off balance by the increasingly bizarre situation.

A thought suddenly struck me. "How old are you?"

Orion hesitated, but he seemed to be doing better at least. "I am not actually of your kind, sir." He said with carefully measured words. "The answer will not tell you as much as you think it will."

"Nevertheless, I would know it."

He caved immediately. "I was born on April 15, sir."

My spark was overtaken by a sinking feeling. "What year."

"This year, sir."

"What!?" Ironhide bellowed in outrage before I sent him a stand down order.

"Time is not the same for me as it is to you," Orion told the black mech. Rather defensively too. Defensively on the part of his father, I realized, who Ironhide had been about to rail at on account of Orion being used for anything despite being a mere two months old. "And there is no accounting for the Eternity I spent in the Aether."

That lit a bulb in my mind. "Is or was your father ever known by the name of Henry Matthews."

Orion flared momentarily. "No, sir."

"But you know of whom I speak."

"Yes sir."

Yes or no answers. He was uncomfortable with the line of questioning then. "Are they familiar with one another?" Perhaps the informant was the man's equivalent in the Initiative. I could not say why I thought of it, considering that Orion being so spark-like should have made me think of one of my kind first and foremost.

"Yes."

"… Is Henry Matthews still alive?" The hope was very small, but…

"Not in the same way as you or the humans, sir." A pause. "Father says there is no equivalent of him in the Initiative if that's what you're asking, sir."

I finally allowed my vents to release our version of a sigh. I suppose Henry Matthews did say that he and his did not bother with groups that were truly beyond redemption. The soldiers behind me were tossing me inquisitive looks, but I would have to discuss things with them later.

Jazz decided to finally speak up again. "So. Does your pop have a name or somethin'?

"Not one that he'd be willing to share at this stage." Orion's whole outline shuddered. "This extension of my mind is losing cohesion. I guess it was too much too soon for me after all. Father was right, as usual." The star shot over to the crate his cube had initially been on. "My apologies but I will be gone soon. The holopad will include some instructions on how to build a device appropriate enough for me to manifest through, if my father's gift is enough to persuade you of the potential benefits of further association." And before any of us could utter a single word, the star hologram disappeared, along with every trace of the consciousness I had felt until that point.

Left behind was a single rod. A still unopened data holopad, which I picked up after a moment's wait. I was surprised when I found it to be secured in the same manner as the cube itself and the crates. Only I would be able to activate it, and attempts by others would cause a full purge. What kind of information was on it, to demand such security?

Sending out the required pulse, I watched as it unfolded and lit up. The holoscreen took shape, first revealing the cypher I would need to activate the crates. Once I had it memorized, a task that took a mere nanosecond, the screen settled into the familiar sight of perfect cyberglyphics.

It was a list of inventory.

A list that was enough to make my processor stall for a full second.

"William," even to my own audials, my voice sounded strange. "You and your men stay back. Against the wall if you can." I did not wait to see if they listened. I was already sending the activation code to the crate in front of me as fast as I could. The top side molecularly disengaged from the rest, becoming less a part of a whole and more a cover for the top. Even before the shift finished, I was tearing it off.

There was a sound like sheared metal, then a crash as I let the crate's top panel fall from my numb digits. I had thought that the sight of the crates themselves was an impossible one, but now…

Either I deliberately descended to my knees or outright fell. I was not altogether sure, and I did not altogether care. Not when my face was bathed in light from inside. Cubes upon cubes of energon overtook my thoughts, neatly stacked on top of one another. So mesmerized I was that I nearly did not feel the shock of the two Autobots I had with me. But I did, for it was easily as big as mine.

My right hand had frozen around the bottom handhold of the holopad, so I only had my left free to reach inside. My digits may have been trembling as I did, but I was not paying as much attention as I probably should have been. My whole attention was enraptured, and the little that remained under my conscious control was barely enough to set up failsafes in case the sight before me was just an illusion and I could not deal with the shock and disappointment once that fear was proven to be fact.

But it was not.

I grasped the real, so wonderfully real cube and lifted it out of the crate with the care I would normally reserve for a millimeter-thin sheet of glass. I stared at it in honest wonder. It was violet. Energon in its most pure, concentrated form, as opposed to the pale blue of the diluted version we had had to survive on for several millennia.

I must have stayed there, kneeling and staring at that small miracle for longer than was healthy, for I only came back to myself when Jazz carefully pulled it out of my grasp. _:Boss bot, you okay?:_

With a huge internal effort, I regained control of my faculties and forced myself back to my full, not inconsiderable height. I gazed down at the open crate for a few seconds longer, lest the sight disappear. What I did next was against all internal health subroutines and common sense developed over hundreds of vorns.

I focused and released a wave of energy like the one I had previously used to snap Jazz and Ironhide back to their senses, only this time I included the cypher modulation.

As I intended, each and every cargo cube shifted and became a proper container all at once.

Jazz and Ironhide wasted no time in tearing the top covers off the ones nearest to them, saying aloud what they contained, revealing yet more energon every time they moved to a new one. With each new shipment, their voices filled with more and more amazement, and the hot, feathery tightening in my chest seemed to get that much stronger. Normal-grade nourishing energon was joined by large tanks of medical-grade, and when Ironhide found the crate of high-grade cubes I almost lost it.

I managed to avoid a scene only because of what Jazz said next. He had reached one of the crates closest to the wall, one that did not spread the glow of energon once the top was removed. "Well dang!" Jazz uttered. "This one's full o' dust." He gave me a serious look. " _Our_ kind 'o dust."

Clinging to the emotional coherence provided by the change in circumstance, I walked over to see. It was true. That crate was full of Protos in powder state. More than had been used in the making of the crates themselves. Combined.

At my unspoken order, Jazz climbed over the other containers and uncovered all the crates located near the walls. In total, there were twenty of them in addition to the two hundred energon crates.

Feeling vaguely on the verge of losing feeling in my limbs but somehow not showing it openly, I checked the holopad again. Perhaps I had missed the punchline about this being a virtual reality simulation or something along those lines.

I read through the entire list again until I reached the end. Only one unusual entry was there. A notice that the "truly sensitive information" would only be released to me, me alone, via a hardwire connection.

Later, Ratchet would go nearly postal on me for exposing myself to what could have turned out to be a disastrous hacking attempt, and Jazz would, for once, be right behind him. Made worse by the reaction I suffered upon being transmitted the data.

Opening the data port on my wrist, I extended the connection cable and plugged it on the right-side end of the holopad's base section. An upload request appeared in my mind's eye, and I at least waited for my firewalls to give the all clear before allowing it through.

I almost staggered under the information stream. Not so much because of the volume being relayed, but because of the nature of the files I was examining as they came. Full systemic vehicle blueprints flashed through my mind's eye, followed by software coding languages and cyberchemical formulas. Plans for medical tools and lab equipment lost to time and war settled into my databanks in perfect order, along with design and manufacture methods for entire frames. Those were followed brazenly by equally detailed, three-dimensional plans for ballistic and guided energy weaponry. More and more science and technology information kept coming, each more game-changing than the rest. Even designs for full cloaking and phase-shifting intangibility modules.

Then I was eighty percent through with the upload, and when I saw what I was being given I blindly reached for a crate cover panel and clumsily tossed it on top of the nearest one.

Complete, flawless plans for the creation of a spacebridge and groundbridge station.

I… I needed to sit down.


End file.
